Another Airline Fee Coming

The airline war against passengers keeps heating up.  In response to the ever-increasing time it takes to board an airplane these days  as passengers haul  to overhead bins bag after bag more than the airline allowance, Delta Air Lines plans to pre load carry-on bags above passengers’ seats on some flights. Yep! It's so bad those sometimes 45 minute or more board times, that now they want to see if the flight attendant can stow our carry-on faster and more orderly than we.

It's a good idea, but only if Delta enforces the number and size limits for a carry-on baggage. They most often do not currently do so. One need only watch a plane boarding today to see passengers carrying three over sized bags on board, and be allowed to do so, in order to evade the standard, stupid luggage fees we all now seem to accept as part of the flying experience. I can stow my legally allowed carry on myself, Delta. Just enforce the carry-on rules you now ignore, and we won't need to have airline employees act as porters.

Slow boarding creates delays, which mean missed connections, unhappy customers and extra costs for the airlines. The fight for overhead baggage space is almost violent these days. The fault is that airlines are afraid to insist boarding passengers bring on only the allowed amount of luggage. Rather than offend and lose business, they let the inconsiderate and selfish passenger create havoc at boarding time.  Every extra minute that a plane stands idle at the gate adds significant costs for the airline. About 1 in 4 U.S. flights already runs at least 15 minutes late, causing many missed connections and changes in flights to accommodate those who missed their flight because someone wanted to bring four bags on board for the overhead bins.

My first question to Delta of it's "Early Valet" service would be, "Do I have to pay extra to have my carry-on stowed for me?" Stupid question, I guess. Surely passengers will be hit with another "extra" fee in the form of  having their bags placed in overhead bins. Could this  experiment by Delta be just another way of cleverly installing another extra fee? Probably so. The airline says it only wants to see if its own workers can load the bins faster than passengers, but more likely it ants to see if this can be another new fee that passengers will not object to vigorously. Once an airline creates a new fee to rob passengers, there is furor and dissent. But gradually, the passenger shrugs his or her shoulders and accepts it as a normal cost of flying. Get ready for this kind of charge being another normal one for flying.

Sigh. I think it might be better to just forget about flying and instead to more often travel where one can do so without the airlines getting us there. How are you?Tod