If you watch baseball or basketball on television, you would have
to have taken a pee break during every single commercial
interruption to have missed the recent Southwest Airlines ad
featuring a bunch of baggage handlers flashing their protruding
bellies at a competitor’s airplane.
The crew of rough-looking dudes screams at the other
carrier’s passengers while revealing their torsos, which bear
painted-on letters spelling: BAGS FLY FREE. I bring up this
ubiquitous commercial merely as a way of saying that, well, I
wish one of my U.S. senators watched sports.
I really do. For if Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., were a
sports fan, the message might have sunk in at some point during
the NCAA men’s basketball tournament or the first week of the
2010 Major League Baseball season that, hey, some airlines are
not charging passengers to transport their bags. Other viewers
might also have reached the equally obvious realization that not
charging for bags is perceived by at least one airline to confer
upon itself a competitive advantage so valuable that spending
millions of dollars to advertise that point on national
television would be a worthwhile investment. Alas, Sen. Shaheen
is not as swift as the average American sports fan.
Nor, apparently, are five other U.S. senators. Led by Sen.
Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., six Senate Democrats were so outraged at
hearing that Florida-based Spirit Airlines plans to start
charging for some carry-on bags this August that they have
sponsored a bill to tax those fees out of existence.
At a press conference, Schumer said, “It’s time to draw the
line. Airlines should not be allowed to charge for overhead
luggage.”
Schumer’s indignation doesn’t apply to luggage stored under
the seat in front of you? Well, it probably does, but Spirit’s
fee doesn’t. The airline intends to charge only for items stored
in overhead bins. But don’t let that little fact get in the way
of a good politician-saves-the-helpless-woman anecdote. Shaheen
didn’t. FOX News reported that she said, “if you’re a woman
without pockets, you can’t even bring that comb and
toothbrush.”
If Shaheen can’t fit her comb and toothbrush under the seat
in front of her, I don’t want to know how she brushes her
teeth.
The hygiene of U.S. senators aside, do we really need an
act of Congress to protect us from airline baggage fees? An aware
sports fan will have the right answer: no. Airlines compete on
price all the time. They already compete based on baggage fees.
If you don’t want to pay baggage fees, fly an airline that
doesn’t charge them. If all the airlines serving your community
charge baggage fees, complain. To the company, that is, not your
senator. Companies tend to respond to consumer complaints.
It is worth noting that Spirit Airlines is a discount
carrier. Like Southwest, Spirit charges less than $50 a ticket
for some flights. For a $39.99 annual fee, customers can join
Spirit’s membership club and get access to one-way fees in the
single digits. If you’re paying $9 for a flight, you might not
mind paying $30 to bring a bag.
But Schumer and his gang of airline fee police don’t see it
that way. They’d rather airlines charge you a higher fare and no
fee. Schumer argues that airlines don’t pay taxes on fees they
apply to carry-on bags, so Spirit is really just trying to avoid
paying taxes. Well, maybe. But Spirit’s bag fee might also make
the planes lighter, which would save fuel, which could save the
airline millions of dollars, which could help keep ticket (and
fuel) prices lower.
I think Schumer’s real motivation is simply to tax the fees
for the sake of collecting more money for Washington. He’s
pretending to be outraged on behalf of the American consumer to
justify his new tax. But I think Shaheen is dim enough to
actually believe that airline baggage fees are sinister abuses of
the traveling public from which Congress must save us all.
Unaware of the economic foolishness of it, a lot of
Americans will probably agree with her. Except for the smarter
ones, of course. The ones who watch basketball and
baseball.
