Southwest, as a function of owning Airtran, has tasted the allure of fees and saw its revenues increase 6x most recently in earning more than $176million in fees for 2012.  Most of that was from bag fees collected by Airtran.

A very small portion was Southwest related (they do charge for bags, just not the first few bags).

I think we now know what the temptation is.  Someone at Southwest did the math on their customers and realized that number could climb 6x more if they adopted it system wide.

The question asked is “Yes, but at what cost?”

It’s hard to say with Southwest.  Their extremely loyal customer base might be far more likely to punish Southwest than some other airlines’ customers would.

I think we’ll see more dialog about the chance of fees at Southwest and we may even see Southwest adjust itself somewhat in the landscape of fees.  Frankly, I think you could make an argument at Southwest that introducing modest baggage fees for 2 or more checked bags.  It aligns Southwest against its competitors better while still delivering exeptional value to almost all who fly them.

Filed under: Airline Fees by ajax
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