Airtran sucking more money from the flying public

[GSXR600]

Fortunately, no where near as bad as your Grammar.

Relax Fracis is just a question!...........the grammar police is back!.............ohh boy.

 

[GSXR600]

Sucking huh? Coming from a fractional guy? You have to do that every leg don't you? I mean it must be great because no matter what seat you are in, you are still a flight attendant too. Bring me more coffee &itch!!!!!

[FONT='Calibri','sans-serif']Actually I never, ever check my bag because we are not allowed to, just in case we get a call. And NOOOO we don’t serve passengers. When we fly our owners they have to serve themselves unless a flight attendant is requested.[/FONT]

 

[BeachBumz]

Or add $15 to all the airfares instead of nickle and diming to death.

If every airline raised fares $15.00 to every ticket, you would be charging some passengers for a fee that they are not using. Everyone that flies doesn't check a bag for their trip.

I'm not saying it's a good to charge customers to check a bag, but right now every business is trying to find ways to generate revenue to make it through this economic crisis for the short-term.

 

[Secret Squirrel]

At least until they can get the pilot group to take a pay cut and benefit reduction to help offset managements inability to run an airline WITH THE LOWEST COSTS IN THE INDUSTRY. Come on guys, time to chip in to help passengers pay for all these new fees.

 

[maxblast72]

Airtran hauls 25 million pax a year. Take away 5 million pax that are business class and A-Plus Rewards Elite members (who aren't charged the fee). I asked a couple station managers yesterday what percentage of pax they thought checked bags and the average was about 75%. Do the math, and that is about $225 million of extra revenue a year. For a company Airtran's size, that is about a 7-8% revenue increase.

If you add the fees to the fares, Airtran might not come up on the top line on the search websites like Travelocity. For an airline that isn't as well know as others, I would think it is important that Airtran comes up near the top during searches.

 

[Steeler Fan]

If you add the fees to the fares, Airtran might not come up on the top line on the search websites like Travelocity. For an airline that isn't as well know as others, I would think it is important that Airtran comes up near the top during searches.

That's one of the smarter posts on here. Well said.

 

[Steeler Fan]

delta announces the fee and hardly a peep is heard. airtran announces the fee and the world is coming to an end on cnn all day long. get real.

Nice. I was in ATL (on reserve), watching the evening local news, and the big story was about this NEW FEE from AirTran!

The media in ATL is obviously in the tank for DL, because nowhere in the story did they mention that Delta did the same thing earlier (and that Deltas 1st checked bag fee is actually more $ than ours).

Personally, there was a huge marketing opportunity here, but AirTran typically doesn't spend $ for extra advertising (time will tell whether that's a good move or not)--If we had the same TV adverstising that SWA does, I'd be all about trying to hype the difference between DL and AAI by NOT putting the fee out there.

Unfortunately, in alot of places, people don't know AirTran (are you guys cargo?)

*Name/Brand recognition is not exactly our strong suit outside of ATL/BWI/MCO/IND/MDW

 

[BrokenWing]

Are non-revers and jumpseaters going to have to pay as well?

 

[milky]

Airtran hauls 25 million pax a year. Take away 5 million pax that are business class and A-Plus Rewards Elite members (who aren't charged the fee). I asked a couple station managers yesterday what percentage of pax they thought checked bags and the average was about 75%. Do the math, and that is about $225 million of extra revenue a year. For a company Airtran's size, that is about a 7-8% revenue increase.

If you add the fees to the fares, Airtran might not come up on the top line on the search websites like Travelocity. For an airline that isn't as well know as others, I would think it is important that Airtran comes up near the top during searches.

In general, I agree with you here except that when you offer a dis-incentive to check a bag, many more passengers will stop checking bags. It will probably only equate to 10-15% I would guess, but if you are going to look at numbers, you should look at more accurate numbers. I think that it is a good place to generate fees, but I also think that the airlines are shooting themselves in the foot with the fees. People look at it negatively when they get fees on top of their tickets. Over time, that will go away, but it doesn't help the black eye that the industry is still wearing. People hate to travel. Blame it on the service, the airports, TSA, delays, etc... Either way, the airlines need to be finding ways to make people change their perception of the industry. I'm not smart enough to know the right answer, but I know that putting fees on passengers is a step in the wrong direction.
All that being said, no airline should be charging less than their operating costs for providing the service. I'm not advocating taking losses. I'm just saying that they need to paint it in the right light.

 

[Britpilot]

Relax Fracis is just a question!...........the grammar police is back!.............ohh boy.

"Relax Francis, it was just a question. The grammar police are back. Oh boy."

There you go Sparky, I fixed it for you.