British Airways Introduces Shiny New Fee For Selecting Your Seat
New fees are pretty much inevitable. It's obnoxious and even six months ago it might have drawn howls of criticism, but now everyone seems to be charging extra for choosing emergency exit seats and so the next step has come: charging to select your seat at all. Congratulations airline companies, your nickle-and-dime opaque fees have finally crossed the line from outrageous to embittering. The LA Times has the deal:
We’ve seen airlines add extra charges to reserve popular exit-row seats and aisle seats. But are you ready for this one? Starting Ocober. 7, British Airways plans to charge you just to select a seat. That’s right: $30 to $90 for the right to choose a seat any time up to 24 hours before flying. After that time, you get a free pick of what’s left.
You're exempt if you're in first class or have a particularly high status with the airline, but everyone else is on the hook. It's $30 for coach and $90 for business, presumably on the assumption that there aren't really bad seats in business, so if you want to choose your seat you must really want to choose your seat.
Now let's say that you've paid the $30 fee months in advance and you're all ready to choose a seat. You choose an exit row seat. That'll be another $75 please, thank you. Bringing the total cost of bagging an exit seat on a British Airways flight to $105. Everything else aside, this is going to make it much harder for us to crow about how British Airways is cheaper than Ryanair.
There's a punchline to this story, but since we stole it from the LAT Travel Blog we're going to make you click through to get it. You'll know it when you see it.
[Photo: garybembridge / Flickr]
Related Stories:
· Want to choose your seat? Pay up at British Airways [LA Times Travel]
· Airline Fees Coverage [Jaunted]
· British Airways Coverage [Jaunted]
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