Up, Up and Away with Additional Fees
And so it's come to this.
JetBlue yesterday announced that customers looking for blankets and pillows during flights are welcome to such amenities -- for the low, low price of just $7 per set, which passengers can keep and reuse, along with a $5 coupon for Bed Bath & Beyond. This follows the well-publicized initiative by several other airlines to start charging fees for all checked baggage. No handy coupon attached to those rules, probably because there's no such company as Bilked, Bamboozled & Beyond.
Customer centricity, we hardly knew ye.
One does start to wonder what the future holds for fliers in this death-by-a-thousand-cuts strategy. Enjoying that article about badminton-playing Sherpas in our in-flight magazine? Then you'll love our $5 reading fee. Using your own battery-powered laptop to catch up on work? How industrious of you; that'll be $7.50 for each Word document you save. Got a weak bladder? Careful, it's $2 a pop to use our restroom. Additional fees may apply for additional activities.
I can't honestly say that my heart bleeds for the airline industry, exactly, but I do understand that they've been suffering through the same petroleum price-gouging raising that the rest of us have. (Although gas prices have been coming down lately; isn't it odd that airfares haven't followed suit?)
But why not just swallow that particular pill and roll all those extra fees into the price of the ticket? That way we don't all have to carry $100 in singles onboard, and watch our flight attendants putting their mathematical skills to the test when making change. It might even speed the whole process up a little bit.
On second thought: Nahhh. It'll never fly.
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