The Fly Guy

By Joe Brancatelli

My father, a shoe retailer who never took an out-of-town business trip, nevertheless taught me a practical lesson about life on the road: You get what you pay for — and anything a supplier throws in for free probably isn’t worth buying when it charges for it.

The old man pretty much nailed the airlines on their current strategy of checked luggage.

As we discussed last fall, the government says that airlines are “mishandling” checked bags at a record clip. That’s bad enough when they throw in the service for free. But along with their luggage-­handling inefficiency comes a barrage of niggling new rules and fees: They have reduced the free allowance to two bags from three; slashed the maximum weight of the bags to 50 pounds from 70; begun charging for curbside check-in; and have imposed hefty surcharges of as much as $100 whenever you check an extra (or extra-heavy) bag. On Monday, United Airlines went even further: Most travelers on the nation’s second-largest airline will now be permitted only one free checked bag, not two. And some carriers (most notably, Spirit and Skybus) have reached the final frontier: They have unbundled luggage handling from the ticket price and charge for any bag you deign to transport inside the bellies of their aircraft.

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