An analysis has indicated that major U.S. airlines are not disclosing the vast majority of existing ancillary fees on their websites, despite regular statements to the contrary by the airlines.

Published: 21 Sep 2010

An analysis has indicated that major U.S. airlines are not disclosing the vast majority of existing ancillary fees on their websites, despite regular statements to the contrary by the airlines.

The Consumer Travel Alliance (CTA) tracked the time and effort it would take a typical two-bag traveller needing extra legroom to find and calculate the total cost of a flight from Washington, D.C. to Orlando, Florida.

The analysis found:

• Not a single one of the seven airline websites in the study offered a page or chart with specific fee information regarding extra legroom or seat upgrades.

• Although the airline sites disclosed baggage fees, those fees were often multiple clicks away from the main page and buried in diagrams and legal fine print.

• To compare baggage fees and attempt to find the fees for extra legroom, a typical traveller would have to visit seven different airline sites, view 47 different web pages, and dig through more than 11,000 words of airline fine print.

“The airlines are asking travellers to put on a blindfold and hand over their wallets every time they buy a ticket,” said Charles Leocha, director of the CTA.

“There is no way for a traveller to find the vast majority of extra fees charged by airlines on their websites, because those fees aren't even listed. That's why two-thirds of air travellers said in a recent survey that they had been surprised by hidden fees at the airport. If airlines want to charge ancillary fees, they should be required to disclose those fees through every distribution channel in which they sell their tickets.”

The analysis also refuted frequent airline claims that all of their ancillary fees are listed on their websites.

Citing an example, the CTA mentioned that a spokesperson for the airline industry told Bloomberg on September 17th that "fee information is already available on carrier websites." In another news story, the same spokesperson said that "airlines post their fees on their websites ..." and went on to claim that "there's nothing hidden about the fees by the US airliners that have fees."

Earlier this year, the CTA released the results of a study showing that hidden fees charged by airlines on popular routes can increase the base cost of an airline ticket by an average of 54 percent for a typical traveller with two checked bags and extra legroom, or by an average of 26 percent for a comparable one-bag traveller.