checked bag fees - Travel Deals

The number of airline fees has risen so dramatically that keeping track of them is nearly impossible – and the ones that seem to increase the fastest are the luggage fees.

Most airlines these days charge for certain checked bags, and some even charge for carry-on bags. Because these fees are almost never included in the price you see when you’re looking for cheap flights, the fare you thought was a great deal may turn out to be pretty much the same as all the others once you’ve added in the luggage fees.

So even though these things change frequently, we thought we’d outline some of the baggage fees that are out there – as well as places you can go to look up current information – in order to help you make an informed purchasing decision.

>> And don’t miss these tips for avoiding checked bag fees, either.

Anyone who’s flown in the last few years knows that the price of your airline ticket isn’t the only cost associated with your flight – the airlines have other ways these days of extracting additional cash from your wallet. People who travel frequently enough to have achieved an elite status with an airline are generally exempt from all the additional fees, but for the rest of us, flying has become the “nickel and dime me to death” experience.

The biggest additional airline fee is for luggage – very few airlines allow passengers even one checked bag for free anymore, and a few are starting to charge even for carry-on bags. Airlines in the latter camp are typically the low-cost carriers – most notably Ryanair in Europe and Spirit Air in the United States – and although they’ve gotten flak for it, these no-frills airlines aren’t making excuses or apologizing. In fact, in many cases, they’re even raising their existing baggage fees. They take that “no-frills” badge awfully seriously, don’t they?

>> Learn more about airline baggage fees

Now that the airlines have parsed out all sorts of little fees they used to bundle in the price of an airline ticket, it’s more difficult to figure out the actual cost of travel. You hunt for cheap airfare, you think you find a killer deal on one of the airfare booking sites, and then the additional fees start piling up.

Some of the fees come instantly in the form of taxes and charges before you can even hit the “buy” button on your purchase. But others are more sneaky, showing up when you decide to check a bag or if you should get hungry or cold or bored during your flight.

If the price of an airline ticket is super cheap these days and the additional fees don’t add up to much, in theory that’s fine – but if you aren’t aware of all the additional charges and they add up to make it so that “great deal” on a ticket isn’t such a great deal after all, that’s a pain.

The airfare booking sites won’t tell you about all the little fees when you’re making your purchase – partly to make their prices on tickets seem lower, and partly because the charges change frequently and it would be hard to keep up to date. That means you’ve got to do a bit of homework before your trip to find out how much that ticket will really end up costing you. Here are some articles to help you do just that.