Delta And JetBlue Quietly Started Charging To Check Bags Curbside At Some Airports — $3.50 For What Used To Be Free

Delta Air Lines and JetBlue have quietly started charging a fee to passengers who want to check their bag curbside at Houston’s Bush Intercontinental. They’ve joined American Airlines and Southwest Airlines in outsourcing the service to Bags, Inc. and charging a fee for it, based on airport signage.

The model that American and more recently Southwest have followed is:

• This replaces high cost employees with low paid contractors
  
• And the model is to charge customers for checked bags, splitting the fees
  
• Thus, they turn a cost center into profit.

Here’s the new curbside setup at Houston Bush Intercontinental airport, where American Airlines shares the queue with Delta, JetBlue, Spirit Airlines and Frontier. Charging a fee for what used to be free, and making your customers line up together with Spirit’s is not very premium – and another example of Delta degrading its brand.

Delta’s website describes curbside at most U.S. airports as a no-fee service handled by “service partners.” Delta actually outsources more than most other airlines. Currently they appear to use BAGS, Inc. at Tampa, Houston Hobby, New Orleans, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Charleston, and Phoenix.

In some cases, like in Phoenix it’s a complimentary airport-run program. However, when passengers are charged extra for the service on top of checked bag fees, like this Delta passenger in Tampa they find it confusing.

Southwest Airlines may have made a big mistake firing its skycaps and outsourcing curbside check-in. They’re saving money on labor, but they’re probably losing quite a bit of bag fee revenue, at least if my experiences are any indication.

Southwest is now charging an Agent Assist Fee at Check-in for Curbside at Dallas Love Field.
byu/LowFaresDoneRightEIR inSouthwestAirlines

That’s because tipping the outsourced curbside agent can be a way to get free bags. $5 to the Bags, Inc. guy at the counter is better than $45 to Southwest.

American and Southwest (perhaps!) clearly monetized outsourced curbside as an ancillary fee business. Delta and JetBlue are more visible in airport-sponsored remote bag drop programs that use the same vendor, though there are clearly exceptions that run counter to passenger expectations.

When the service is airport-funded and free, that’s a great product, although I prefer it with airline employees empowered to handle airline reservation issues and bag exceptions beyond just what the computer tells them. American Airlines still does this in-house (via wholly-owned subsidiary Envoy Air) in Miami, where it’s still free.

But when the airline outsources to a contractor, and converts a service they used to offer as part of the ticket for a new fee (which varies), that’s unfortunate but the direction that downmarket airlines are headed. Nickel and diming even paid premium passengers is the opposite of a ‘premium pivot’ at American, it’s the strategic direction of Southwest Airlines even as they attempt to offer more upscale products, and it’s unfortunately what we’ve come to expect from once-premium Delta.

For the workers, there’s an irony. The pay at the outsourced contractor is lower, but since passengers are paying for the service they tend to tip less and less often as well.