Southwest Airlines quietly raised checked bag fees on Tuesday. This has gotten little notice.

• The mental model of Southwest is ‘bags fly free’
  
• But they’re much more persnickety about slightly overweight and oversized bags
  
• And while the cost of the first two checked bags is bundled with their tickets, the price of a third and more has gone up too.

American Airlines charges $30 for a slightly overweight bag domestically. Up to 70 pounds it’s $100. So Southwest is now much more expensive than their Dallas-based competitor.

I never pay attention to bag weight. I don’t often check bags but when I do with American Airlines, thanks to airline status, I’m allotted up to 70 pounds per bag instead of 50 pounds.

If I’m flying Southwest I need to take great care because they are adamant about their 50 pound limit. Earlier this year I did find myself moving items across bags when one bag weighed in one or two pounds over that… even though airport check-in counter scales are often miscalibrated. They’re being banged and slammed with heavy luggage all day, every day and may not be precise.

Now Southwest charges,

• $150 if a checked bag is 51 pounds
  
• $200 if a checked bag is 71 pounds
  
• And this is for your first or second bag – there’s no ‘credit’ accounted for here for your free checked bag allowance.

Oversized bags are $200 apiece, and each bag after the second checked bag costs $150.

A Southwest Airlines spokesperson offers,

Effective October 29, 2024, Southwest Airlines updated its pricing on Excess, Overweight, and Oversize Baggage. Our fares and product prices fluctuate with the demands of the marketplace, but our North Star remains providing more all-in value to more Customers than any other carrier—such as everyday low fares, first and second bags fly free®; no change or cancel fees; and an industry-first—flight credits that don’t expire.

There is nothing ‘market-based’ about increasing the price of services charged to customers that have already purchased their tickets.

And there’s nothing ‘demand-based’ about this higher price for overweight, oversized or third bags. There’s not suddenly a new capacity constraint or jolt in demand. It’s just the new Southwest under activist investor Elliott Management.

Note that these fees aren’t just for future ticket purchases, they are for tickets that have already been purchased. The fee structure is based on date of travel, not date of purchase.

Applying new fees to tickets purchased before the fee increase can be viewed as a form of post-purchase price increase. It essentially changes the total cost of travel after the purchase, which seems deceptive, as passengers expect that they’re locking in all costs when they buy their ticket. However, since bag fees haven’t been paid yet they argue that they can change the fees at will.

This underscores a real problem with Department of Transportation fee display rules that have ben enjoined by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

• The federal government was demanding that fees be displayed alongside fares at the first instance where schedule and price is shown.

• That way consumers compare cost including a checked bag, among other costs, even though they may not be checking a bag (and even though there may be other fees they’ll be paying, which vary by airline).

• But this deceptively leads customers to think that that is their cost for the bundle of services when it may not be – the base fare is what is being purchased, but various fees may go up later!

So much for Southwest being more consumer-friendly. They’ve built a reputation on free bags, but the rules around those bags aren’t friendly at all. And DOT regulation doesn’t aim to fix the problem of post-purchase increases, but contributes to a deceptive understanding of travel costs for many passengers. We’ll see if these rules ultimately go into effect. They will serve to benefit Southwest, because their fares often look higher now when compared (because they bundle checked bag costs) but will appear more competitive when consumers are required to be shown travel costs inclusive of fees Southwest appears not to charge but others do.