/PRNewswire/ -- The Consumer Travel Alliance (CTA), a non-profit organization promoting consumer interests on travel policy issues, today released an analysis showing 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. CTA and other leading consumer and travel organizations are meeting with U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today to support his efforts to bring full transparency to airline fees.
The CTA analysis tracked the time and effort it would take a typical two-bag traveler needing extra legroom to find and calculate the total cost of a flight from Washington, D.C. to Orlando, Florida. A video showing the findings of the analysis can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqDrmXp_US8
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 traveler 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 travelers to put on a blindfold and hand over their wallets every time they buy a ticket," said Charles Leocha, director of the Consumer Travel Alliance. "There is no way for a traveler 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 travelers 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. For example, a spokesperson for the airline industry told Bloomberg on September 17th that "fee information is already available on carrier Web sites." 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, 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 traveler with two checked bags and extra legroom, or by an average of 26 percent for a comparable one-bag traveler. One of the routes examined in that earlier analysis was used as the basis for this current review.
Travelers concerned about the issue of hidden fees can visit http://www.MadAsHellAboutHiddenFees.com, a joint effort of the Consumer Travel Alliance, Business Travel Coalition, and American Society of Travel Agents, to sign a petition urging the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to take action to make those fees fully transparent. The three organizations plan to present the petitions to the DOT on September 23rd, "Mad As Hell Day."
Methodology:
The analysis examined a single traveler with two checked bags wishing to obtain extra legroom on a flight from Washington, D.C. to Orlando, Florida. Base prices for the analysis were drawn from a popular online travel site. The analysis recorded the time and steps required to enter those fees manually, visit each of the websites of the seven airlines flying that route, attempt to locate the fees for checked baggage and extra legroom, and then calculate the full price of each itinerary. The full video analysis can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqDrmXp_US8
-----
Community News You Can Use
www.fayettefrontpage.com
Fayette Front Page
www.georgiafrontpage.com
Georgia Front Page
Follow us on Twitter: @GAFrontPage
Showing posts with label fees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fees. Show all posts
Monday, September 20, 2010
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
New Survey Shows Consumers 'Mad As Hell' About Hidden Airline Fees: Two-Thirds Say They Have Been Surprised by Additional Fees at the Airport
/PRNewswire/ -- The Consumer Travel Alliance (CTA), Business Travel Coalition (BTC) and American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) today released the results of an online survey of 1,396 travelers showing widespread surprise and anger over hidden airline fees for services such as checked baggage, advance seating and priority boarding.
Responding to traveler anger, the groups announced the launch of a new website, http://madashellabouthiddenfees.com/, that will allow travelers to tell their own hidden fee stories, create YouTube videos, and sign a petition to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) urging it to take action to require airlines to disclose those fees in advance through every ticketing channel in which airlines sell their seats. The groups also announced that they were marking September 23rd as "Mad As Hell Day!" and planned to deliver thousands of traveler petitions to the U.S. DOT on that day.
"As we come to the end of one of the busiest air travel periods of the year, millions of Americans are returning from their summer vacations tanned, rested, and mad as hell," said Kevin Mitchell, Chairman of the Business Travel Coalition. "They are tired of arriving at the airport and finding huge unexpected costs for travel services they thought were part of the ticket price. It's time for consumers, corporate travel managers and travel agents to stand up and say 'we're not going to take it any more!'"
Conducted over the last two weeks before Labor Day, the hidden fees survey found:
-- Two-thirds (66%) of respondents said they had been surprised at the
airport by unexpected fees for things such as checking bags,
requesting a seat assignment, getting extra legroom, or flying
standby.
-- Nearly a third (29%) said they were surprised often or nearly every
time they travel via air by such fees.
-- Nearly two-thirds (65%) said such fees placed some or a great deal of
unexpected financial strain on their budget for the trip, while more
than a quarter (26%) said that those fees placed a great deal of
unexpected strain.
-- A nearly unanimous 99% of respondents said that they think airlines
should be required to disclose all of their fees in advance on every
website that sells airline tickets.
-- When asked to rank the fees they found most annoying, respondents
rated carry-on baggage fees the most annoying, with 91% calling those
fees "very annoying," followed by seat reservation fees (88% very
annoying), checked baggage fees (74%), and telephone reservation fees
(67%).
"Hidden fees are a violation of a traveler's most basic right: to know how much they will have to pay for their trip," said Charlie Leocha, President of the Consumer Travel Alliance. "When two out of every three air travelers say they have been surprised by hidden fees at the airport, you know the current system is broken and needs to be fixed. Airlines should have to share their fees with every traveler, through every ticketing channel in which they participate, to every point of sale."
The three groups have called on Congress and DOT to take swift action to ensure that all ancillary airline fees are fully disclosed to travelers through every distribution channel in which carriers participate so that the total cost of air travel options can be compared among carriers.
"For a travel agent, comparing air travel costs without fee transparency is like trying to read a book with half the pages torn out," said Paul Ruden, Senior Vice President of Legal and Industry Affairs for the American Society of Travel Agents. "We must level the playing field to ensure that travel agents and their customers can make apples-to-apples comparisons of the costs of each trip."
Methodology
The survey was conducted among 1,396 air travelers from August 20 - August 31, 2010. Respondents were recruited from the readers of online travel newsletters distributed by organizations such as Consumer Traveler and the Consumer Travel Alliance, and the survey was conducted online via SurveyMonkey. Full results of the survey can be found at http://madashellabouthiddenfees.com/.
-----
Community News You Can Use
www.fayettefrontpage.com
Fayette Front Page
www.georgiafrontpage.com
Georgia Front Page
Follow us on Twitter: @GAFrontPage
Responding to traveler anger, the groups announced the launch of a new website, http://madashellabouthiddenfees.com/, that will allow travelers to tell their own hidden fee stories, create YouTube videos, and sign a petition to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) urging it to take action to require airlines to disclose those fees in advance through every ticketing channel in which airlines sell their seats. The groups also announced that they were marking September 23rd as "Mad As Hell Day!" and planned to deliver thousands of traveler petitions to the U.S. DOT on that day.
"As we come to the end of one of the busiest air travel periods of the year, millions of Americans are returning from their summer vacations tanned, rested, and mad as hell," said Kevin Mitchell, Chairman of the Business Travel Coalition. "They are tired of arriving at the airport and finding huge unexpected costs for travel services they thought were part of the ticket price. It's time for consumers, corporate travel managers and travel agents to stand up and say 'we're not going to take it any more!'"
Conducted over the last two weeks before Labor Day, the hidden fees survey found:
-- Two-thirds (66%) of respondents said they had been surprised at the
airport by unexpected fees for things such as checking bags,
requesting a seat assignment, getting extra legroom, or flying
standby.
-- Nearly a third (29%) said they were surprised often or nearly every
time they travel via air by such fees.
-- Nearly two-thirds (65%) said such fees placed some or a great deal of
unexpected financial strain on their budget for the trip, while more
than a quarter (26%) said that those fees placed a great deal of
unexpected strain.
-- A nearly unanimous 99% of respondents said that they think airlines
should be required to disclose all of their fees in advance on every
website that sells airline tickets.
-- When asked to rank the fees they found most annoying, respondents
rated carry-on baggage fees the most annoying, with 91% calling those
fees "very annoying," followed by seat reservation fees (88% very
annoying), checked baggage fees (74%), and telephone reservation fees
(67%).
"Hidden fees are a violation of a traveler's most basic right: to know how much they will have to pay for their trip," said Charlie Leocha, President of the Consumer Travel Alliance. "When two out of every three air travelers say they have been surprised by hidden fees at the airport, you know the current system is broken and needs to be fixed. Airlines should have to share their fees with every traveler, through every ticketing channel in which they participate, to every point of sale."
The three groups have called on Congress and DOT to take swift action to ensure that all ancillary airline fees are fully disclosed to travelers through every distribution channel in which carriers participate so that the total cost of air travel options can be compared among carriers.
"For a travel agent, comparing air travel costs without fee transparency is like trying to read a book with half the pages torn out," said Paul Ruden, Senior Vice President of Legal and Industry Affairs for the American Society of Travel Agents. "We must level the playing field to ensure that travel agents and their customers can make apples-to-apples comparisons of the costs of each trip."
Methodology
The survey was conducted among 1,396 air travelers from August 20 - August 31, 2010. Respondents were recruited from the readers of online travel newsletters distributed by organizations such as Consumer Traveler and the Consumer Travel Alliance, and the survey was conducted online via SurveyMonkey. Full results of the survey can be found at http://madashellabouthiddenfees.com/.
-----
Community News You Can Use
www.fayettefrontpage.com
Fayette Front Page
www.georgiafrontpage.com
Georgia Front Page
Follow us on Twitter: @GAFrontPage
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
