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Here's why airlines now charge separately for checked bags and the price keeps going up

Checked bags are $99? Are you kidding me?

via James Emery/Flickr

A group of travelers waits patiently to check their bags.

Maybe you’re one of those elite travelers who’s mastered packing for an entire trip using only carry-on luggage. If so, you’re likely haughty and won’t stop crowing about the convenience of hopping off the plane and jetting to your destination.

We know: The airlines lost your bag in 1986 and you vowed never again. So, now you roll three garments, one pair of shoes, a tiny bottle of 5-in-one body wash, and a Kindle into your backpack, and you're good to go.

For the rest of us mere traveling mortals, especially those with kids, checking bags is a necessary evil—a necessary and costly one.

If it seems to you like checked bag fees have been steadily climbing, that’s because checked bag fees have been steadily climbing. According to this article, bag fees on American Airlines rose 33% just last year from $30 per bag to $40 and 5 of the 6 biggest carriers raised their fees last year.

Why is the entire industry upping their checked-bag fees? There’s a specific reason involving an arcane bit of tax code, which accounts for why the fees are tacked on separately versus rolled into the price of the ticket.

​Jay L. Zagorsky, a business school professor who studies travel, says 7.5% of every domestic ticket goes to the federal government. Airlines dislike this, claiming it raises ticket prices for consumers. But as long as the bag fee is separate, it is excluded from the 7.5% transportation tax.

Estimated bag fees for 2023 topped 7 billion. By making the bag fees separate, airlines saved themselves about half a billion dollars. If that savings has been passed down to the customer, then we all got a bit of a break, too.

​Perhaps you automatically dislike the separate fees because you’re Gen X and remember a time when a ticket was all-inclusive. Now, it feels like you’re paying for stuff you used to get for free.

Turns out that more and more travelers actually like the separate charges.

​“One thing that our research has shown,” Henry Hartevedlt, president of travel industry analytics firm Atmosphere Research told USA Today, “is that more than two-thirds of U.S. leisure airline passengers now feel that the unbundling of the coach product and letting people buy what they want and need on an à la carte basis is actually something they like because it helps them stick to their budget.”

This is a positive way to look at something that’s undoubtedly here to stay. And now if you hear someone complain about bag fees at the airport, you’ll know why it’s done the way it’s done, which is really sweet satisfaction in itself.

Of course, there's always this unusual workaround courtesy of Reddit user Old_Man_Withers, "I Fedex my luggage to the hotel and carry nothing on the plane but my laptop for work. It doesn't matter if it's 2 days or two months, I ship it. The hotel has it waiting in my room when I get there and I ship it back home from there when I'm done. No random inspections, no chances of loss without recompense, fully trackable... I see no downside that isn't worth the 50-100 bucks it costs."

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A 2016 take on a century-old map shows changes in travel over time.

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In 1914, it could take over 40 days to travel to remote places in the world.

That year, John G. Bartholomew — Great Britain’s royal cartographer at the time — published an isochronic map showing travel times from London to various places around the globe. "Isochronic" simply means that lines (isochrones) are drawn on the map between locations that could be reached in the same amount of time. Trips range from “within 5 days journey” to “over 40 days.”

Even at first glance, it’s stunning.

Map by John G. Bartholomew, 1914.

This map tells a story of the evolution of travel in the early 20th century.

Look closely at what happens when a route reaches a land mass.

In North America, the pink range (five to 10 days) extends from New York to Winnipeg.

But in South America, the yellow segment (10 to 20 days) only reaches a hundred miles or so inland before giving way to green, light blue, and soon dark blue (over 40 days).

The difference between these areas lies in railroads, which in 1914 were fairly common in the eastern United States but significantly harder to come by in South America. An article in The Economist quotes geographer L.W. Lyde as writing, “isochronic distances ... change with every additional mile of railway brought into use.”

But the very year that Bartholomew released his map, another form of travel entered the scene: airplanes.

On Jan. 1, 1914, the first scheduled commercial airline flight took place. It lasted just 23 minutes, and its single passenger spent $400 for the ticket (equivalent to over $9,600 today) at an auction, eager to go down in history as the world's first commercial flight passenger.

A Benoist XIV floatplane in 1914, the type used for the first commercial flight. Image from the Florida Photographic Collection/Wikimedia Commons.

By the 1950s, commercial air travel was booming. Passenger flights were expensive and about five times as dangerous as they are today, but rapid innovation and competition among airlines continued to make flights increasingly accessible. From 1954 to 2014, the number of flight passengers in the U.S. grew by by a factor of 21.

Travel on the ground was rapidly changing as well: 1914 was the time of the Ford Model T, a car often credited with bringing affordable travel to middle-class Americans.

A Ford Model T in 1923, nine years after the creation of Bartholomew's map. Via Conrad Poirier/Wikimedia Commons.

In 1956, President Eisenhower authorized the construction of 41,000 miles of the Interstate Highway System. The Interstate was declared complete in 1992 — at which point the project was about $91 billion over its initial budget and about 23 years overdue.

A century after the original, an updated version of Bartholomew’s map shows how much travel has changed.

In 2016, travel search platform Rome2rio updated Bartholomew’s map to show modern travel times from London around the world. The new map calculates journeys by plane, train, car, bus, ferry, and more.

As Rome2rio wrote on their blog, “What we uncovered was fascinating.”

Map by Rome2rio, 2016. To purchase this map, visit Wellingtons Travel Co. Used with permission.

Note that the legend on this map shows a new time scale. No longer do the dark pink areas represent travel “within 5 days,” but instead, “Within ½ day.” On the other end of the spectrum, in blue, what used to show “over 40 days” now shows “over 1½ days.”

Significant changes in the updated map can be seen in Asia, Africa, and parts of South America. In 1914, a traveler from London could reach any part of India in 10 to 20 days. In 2016, the entire country can be reached within ¾ of a day — with many major cities accessible in less than that.

In the coming years, the isochronic map will undoubtedly continue to change as modes of travel evolve across the globe.

How would a high-speed rail system in the U.S. change the map — not to mention your daily life? Will more of South America become pink in the next couple of decades?

However the map changes in the coming years, one thing is certain: Travel today is faster, safer, and cheaper than it's ever been.

Which begs the question: What part of the globe are you planning to explore next?

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