Allegiant fliers complaining about fees but still paying

Travelers check in at the Allegiant Airlines counter Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014, at McCarran International Airport. Allegiant is charging a $5 fee for printing boarding passes at the airport. The $5 charge boosted sagging quarterly earnings.

When Kimberlee Andrews flew to Las Vegas for a recent family vacation, she knew the trip to America’s gambling mecca could empty her wallet. She came here, she said jokingly, with an “overwhelming desire to spend money and get nothing.”

She also figured she’d have to cough up an extra dollar here and there on her carrier, Allegiant Air.

“We were hoping they wouldn’t charge us for air and that the bathrooms wouldn’t be locked — ‘You’ll need a credit card,’ ” Andrews said, laughing at McCarran International Airport before flying home to Grand Junction, Colo.

ALLEGIANT'S ADD-ONS

Among the services Allegiant charges for:

• $13: Buying a ticket online or over the phone

• $14.99: Call center fee (this is in addition to the previous $13 charge for buying a ticket over the phone)

• $1.99-$12.99: Food and drinks

• Up to $80: Seat selection

• $14.99-$35 (each way): Checked bag, if paid for before airport arrival

• $50-$75 (each way): Checked bag, if paid for at airport

• $10-$75 (each way): Carry-on bag such as a rolling suitcase or garment bag

• $50-$75 (each way): Oversized personal items and excess carry-on baggage

Las Vegas-based Allegiant racks up consistent profits selling cheap airplane tickets with a bevy of add-ons, but some people view its latest fee as particularly unreasonable. On Sept. 1, the airline began charging customers, with some exceptions, $5 to print a boarding pass at airport ticket counters. It’s not alone. Fellow ultra-discounter Spirit Airlines charges $10.

“It feels like they’re sticking their hand in our pocket, right when we’re leaving, for a last cash grab,” said Allegiant passenger Jerome Lee, of British Columbia.

But fliers are paying, and the fee is padding Allegiant’s earnings. In the quarter ended Sept. 30, the company’s ancillary air-related charges grew 2 percent year-over-year to an average $39.79 per ticket, in part because of the boarding-pass fee.

Management enacted the change to encourage fliers to print their boarding passes before coming to the airport or to download the free cellphone app Allegiant2Go, which provides electronic boarding passes.

By steering passengers away from ticket counters, Allegiant won’t need as much space in terminals, saving the company rent money.

Allegiant Airlines Boarding Pass Fee

Ticketing agent Joselyn Deleon Guerrero helps Jeff Lee of Canada at the Allegiant Airlines check-in counter in McCarran International Airport Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014. Allegiant is charging a $5 fee for printing boarding passes at the airport. The $5 charge gave a boost to sagging quarterly earnings. Launch slideshow »

Customers “will follow their wallet and their pocketbooks,” said Allegiant Travel Co. CEO Maurice “Maury” Gallagher. “And to the extent you want to create behavior or change behavior, you can charge and plan for it.”

For budget carriers, “anything they can do to decrease staffing or to decrease the number of check-in positions they have, they will do it,” said Jay Sorensen, president of IdeaWorksCompany, an aviation consulting firm.

Profitable for almost 12 consecutive years, Allegiant shuttles leisure travelers from small, underserved cities to popular vacation spots. Ninety percent of Allegiant’s routes have no competition.

As a result, even passengers annoyed by the add-on fees tend to use the airline. But as consumer-behavior scholar Lars Perner sees it, the boarding-pass fee crosses the line and “seems very exploitative.”

Perner, a professor at the University of Southern California, doesn’t oppose all extra fees. Restaurants charge for soda, so why can’t airlines?

But not everyone can download a cellphone app, and travelers don’t always have cheap or easy access to computer printers.

“Maybe people are used to that airline charging all those extra fees,” Perner said. “But you might get stuck with a lot of irate passengers.”

Asked to comment on the reactions from passengers about the boarding pass fee, an Allegiant representative said: “Allegiant is constantly working to find innovative ways to make travel faster and easier. By encouraging customers to print their boarding passes at home or use a mobile boarding pass on their mobile device or tablet, we’re able to keep our fares low and ticket lines short.”

Tags: The Sunday
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