US Airways was actually the first airline to charge $25 dollars for checking one bag, but they offered a $5 dollar discount if you prepaid online.  No more.  They’ve joined the rest of the big legacy airlines (except American which still charges $20 dollars) in charging $25 dollars for the first bag, with only a $2 dollar discount for prepaying online.  United does not offer a discount for prepaying online.  We can only assume that American will join the other airlines in short order.  $60 dollars each way if you check 2 bags.  Wow!

Southwest should have some fun with this one.

I wish I knew, but if I were a betting man, I’d say they probably are.  Why?  The Japanese are looking at who can bring the most traffic  and commercial benefit to a reconstituted JAL in the longterm.  And that has to be Delta, the world’s largest airline, an airline with a pretty formidable presence in Tokyo and beyond on it’s own right.  This deal may not be done yet, but the handwriting is on the wall.  If JAL does leave Oneworld for SkyTeam, it will be a huge blow for the alliance, and American Airlines in particular.

I’m late to post this, so I know it’s already out there.  United has joined the $25 dollar party on first bags.  The rest will surely follow soon.  One has to wonder where it will stop?  There must be a top end of what customers are willing to tolerate paying for the privilege of checking one lousy bag.

Continental jumped on the $25 dollar party wagon today.  Now they join Delta (and USAirways) at the top of the baggage fee pile – $25 bucks for one bag.  Both Delta and Continental will knock $2 dollars off the price if you pay online.  USAirways is currently discounting the price by a whopping $5 dollars if you pay online.  Expect that to last about six more seconds if the rest of the industry continues to jump on this.  And I can’t imagine a scenario where they don’t.  If they all match, and we all continue to pay, where do you think the next stop on the fee meter is?  $30 dollars?   Why not $50?  Pretty soon the fee for your bags will be more than your fare.  Keep in mind that the $25 dollar price point I’m harping on is just for the first bag.  Have the unmitigated gall to check a second bag, and you’ll pay $35 dollars for that one.

I can’t emphasize enough that I have no problem with “unbundling” in principle, and that includes baggage fees.  However, I think the industry runs the risk of pricing this particular service somewhere well north of what customers are willing to tolerate without some kind of backlash.  Will the airlines figure that out before customers have started to vote with their feet?  Time will tell.

Did you happen to catch this New York Times article on rewards cards, or specifically on the extra costs merchants incur by accepting  cards?  The author seemed to have a philosophical view of his fellow man being better off if we all stopped using plastic.  He opines that retailers must raise prices to cover the cost thus unfairly penalizing those who don’t use, or cannot obtain credit cards.  The author doesn’t really come down on one side or the other in the end.  What do you think?  Does reading the author’s ideas make you less likely to use rewards cards in the future?  I can only speak for me…NO WAY will I stop using my cards to rack up rewards!

I don’t fly Southwest Airlines very often.  By that, I mean that I fly them 2 to 3 times a year, sometimes a little more.  It’s not that I dislike Southwest, I certainly don’t, it’s just that between my work (which has no contracts with Southwest) and personal travel (which I tend to use to pad my elite qualifying status) I just simply don’t have that many occasions to use Southwest.  I suspect if they were ever to see fit to add Washington National (DCA) to their route map, I might fly them more often, but until then, I will likely not fly them enough to become an “A Lister.”

In any event, I did fly Southwest down to Tampa this weekend, and I thought I’d share the details with you.  I don’t offer my experience as any kind of evidence of anything other than the fact that I had an uneventful and pleasant trip.  I’ve had 2 Rapid Rewards tickets sitting around for sometime now, and I thought this to be an ideal opportunity to use them.  I booked the flights, BWI-TPA-BWI a few months ago with a Friday, January 8 departure, and Monday, January 11 return.  Standard Rapid Rewards inventory was widely available when I booked, and I had no problem securing the seats.

About a week before the trip, I received an email reminder from Southwest of my upcoming trip.  That reminder included a bit of advertising, including an offer to try Southwest’s new Early Bird Check-in (EBCI).  If you buy EBCI, Southwest will basically check you in at 36 hours prior to departure, giving you early access to a better boarding group number in theory.  I was curious to try the product, so I bit.  The cost is $10 dollars each way, so a total of $20 dollars for the flight down to Tampa for Mrs MJonTravel and I.  I only bought EBCI for the flight to Tampa since I just wanted to try it out.  More on how it worked out in a minute.

As luck would have it, Mrs MJonTravel had a work conflict come up that caused us to need to return on Sunday instead of Monday.  I thought to myself “fabulous…I’m sure there won’t be any Rapid Rewards seats left.”  I grudgingly went to Southwest.com, and much to my surprise, all but one return flight on Sunday had Rapid Rewards availability, standard availability at that!  Southwest.com is just one area where Southwest really sets itself apart.  I changed our return reservations myself online, and I promise you, it took less than 5 minutes!  It was so easy.  Kudos to Southwest for making it that way.  No change fees, add collects, or drama.  Yay!  Better yet, had these have been purchased tickets, I could’ve changed our return with no $150 dollar change fees, only paying the difference in fare if there were any.

After changing our flights, it was time to print our boarding passes.  There was no need to rush to the nearest computer at exactly the 24 hour mark since I had purchased EBCI.  Southwest had done the work for me.  I’m sure glad they did, because even with EBCI, our boarding positions were A43 and A44.  Better than C, but not that great, especially considering that we got almost the same boarding positions on the return without paying extra for it.  In their defense, it was a busy Friday night, and our flight was packed.  Furthermore, EBCI is first come, first served and I didn’t buy it until a few days before our flight.  But it still makes me wonder if Southwest might not need to consider a limit on the number of EBCI slots made available?  I think that’s something they may need to think about.

I won’t bother with reviews of my flights.  They were fine.  The inflight staff to/from Tampa were polite, pleasant and friendly, just like you’d expect from Southwest.  We did not check luggage for this trip, and since we had checked in online, we did not interact with ticket counter staff.

Rapid Rewards – Southwest’s Frequent Flyer Program

Rapid Rewards is a fairly straightforward frequent flyer program.  If you are a purely domestic flyer, don’t care about using miles to travel internationally, and live near an airport that Southwest serves, Rapid Rewards is an extremely attractive program.  Fly 8 roundtrips (1 Rapid Rewards credit per flight), you get a Standard Award (16 credits) deposited into your account, no muss, no fuss.  Add the Rapid Rewards Visa to your wallet, use any of their partners, and add credits to you account at a “Rapid” clip.

I was mildly amused when waiting for our flight to Tampa on Friday.  A passenger whom I overheard saying she flew the same flight almost weekly was blathering about how she could never use Rapid Rewards tickets anymore unless she used a Freedom Award (2 standard awards for last seat availability).  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I was traveling on a standard award (and so was Mrs MJonTravel).    So, those tickets are available.  In fact, a bit of poking around the Southwest website with some test bookings seems to indicate to me that award availability is pretty good.  I’m sure it varies from market to market and time of year, but I didn’t see anything that indicates to me that there is any kind of real difficulty in finding standard award seats on Southwest if you’re the least bit flexible.

The Bottom Line

Southwest works for a great many people, including myself.  Southwest’s great people, simple product, and reasonable policies for changing your travel plans cannot be beat.  While American and AAdvantage will continue to be my primary airline and frequent flyer program for the foreseeable future, Southwest is a compelling option for many, especially if extensive international travel isn’t on your agenda.

AAdvantage, like most frequent flier programs, has partnerships with a number of different partners that allow you to earn any number of bonus miles.  One partner that I’m enjoying so far is BankDirect.  You can review details on their partnership with AAdvantage here.  I’ve already earned some bonus miles, including bonuses through their “refer-a-friend” program.  Long story short, if I refer you to BankDirect, and you open a mileage account, we both earn bonus miles.

If you’d like a referral, so we both earn bonus miles, click the “Contact Me” link to the right.  I’ll need your email address to refer you.

We’re here.  Mrs MJonTravel and I flew down Friday afternoon on a Southwest nonstop from BWI.  Our flight was a little late leaving and then we had 135 knot headwinds all the way.  Otherwise, things were fine.  Great actually.  Southwest’s inflight crew was super, passing down the aisles for 2 official rounds of beverages and requests for 3 rounds were cheerfully delivered to whomever asked.

I’ll post a complete trip report next week, with thoughts on Southwest’s new Early Bird Check-in (which I used on the way down), Rapid Rewards (traveling on RR tickets this trip), and Southwest in general (which doesn’t charge $25 dollars to check one bag like Delta now does).

If you haven’t noticed, the $25 dollar price-point for checking one bag is on my radar.  I’ve been soft on bag fees.  Why?  I don’t have a huge issue with “unbundling” in general, and baggage fees in particular…to a point.  Not to mention, as an elite member of 2 mileage programs, I don’t pay baggage fees anyway.  I’ve posted previously that I think the “sweet spot” for bag fees is JetBlue’s policy of allowing the first checked bag free of charge.  Shockingly, other airlines have not caught on to my obvious airline industry genius and continue to pile on.  Apparently because travelers are either buying into this  by paying the fees with joy or annoying the rest of us when they try to sneak all of their crap on the airplane.  Sooner or later, the airlines are going to discover the top end of what travelers are willing to tolerate in regards to bag fees.  Only time will tell if travelers stop flying them before they figure it out.

Mark my words, we are getting close to the breaking point on baggage fees.  Delta has raised the price of checking just one bag to $25 big ones.  You get a whopping $2 dollar discount if you pay online.  Here’s the link to Delta.com.  I can only hope that someone says enough is enough, and doesn’t match.  But I’m not optimistic.

Again, widely blogged about elsewhere.  Starwood’s latest promotion is available for registration here.  Double points for stays of one or two nights.  Triple points for 3 night stays.  And Quadruple points for stays of 4 nights or more.