Hey, How About a New Airline Fee to Get Off the Plane Before Everyone Else?

July 9, 2012 at 4:12 PM | by Omri | Comments (0)

Airline fees have become such an ingrained part of the flying experience that there are now multiple different sites devoted to helping travelers understand what they're paying to whom and why.

Spirit Airlines, the anti-customer Ryanair of North America, has used fees to rack up reliable profits, triggering a consumer backlash that by all accounts will have exactly zero impact on how they do business (although in fairness, the airline did delay until October its $2 kiosk fee, which is essentially a $2 paper charge, so it's not like they're monsters!)

It was only a matter of time before the airline industry brainstormed fresh ways to nickle-and-dime customers. This new one is kind of inspired, and comes from a survey conducted by fare-tracking site Airfarewatchdog. Apparently about one out of every six passengers would be willing to pay a fee to deplane faster by jumping to the front of the line. Because why not?

As we imagine it, everyone would have to sit demurely in their coach seats while the people who paid a little bit extra would walk from the back of the plane to the front (we're assuming they couldn't pay $5 or whatever to jump ahead of first and business class, since those travelers would literally revolt). Attendants would have to remind fidgeting passengers that they hadn't paid enough to be allowed to stand up in the aisle just quite yet. How thoroughly delightful would that be?

On one hand, this poll is a stunt by Airfarewatchdog to get attention and - more importantly - pageviews. "Let's ask about something provocative that may or may not ever happen, and then people will write about our provocative topic and send traffic our way." In the past they could have surveyed travelers about stand-up seating or inflight pay toilets, but both of those have been done to death. So instead they choose fees to get out of coach. Very creative. Link (they earned it!)

On the other hand, how confident are you that some airline isn't going to find the idea inspirational? As Airfarewatchdog founder George Hobica points out, there was a time when carry-on fees were unthinkable. When they were first launched we declared them the single dumbest idea of 2010. An entity no less powerful than the United States Federal Government threatened intervention. Now they're just another part of the travel world.

So again, how confident are you really?

[Photo: momentcaptured1 / Flickr]

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