The Lollipop Road

Airline extras and fees have been a hot topic lately.  As airlines continue to figure out new ways to make money, priority and advanced seating assignment fees are becoming more popular.  Although Northwest Airlines recently dropped its Coach Choice program, that move was not a sign of the program’s unpopularity or lack of revenue generation, but rather a result of their merger with Delta and Delta’s inability to maintain the program on their web platform.

Fortunately, most major domestic carriers have to this point resisted charging a fee for advance seat assignments or premium seating.  However, advance premium seating is still typically reserved only for the most frequent flyers and highest fare paying passengers.  So, perhaps the opportunity to snag a premium seat for a little extra cash might not be a bad thing, so long as you can still assign any regular seat for free at the time of reservation.

Unfortunately, however, the low-cost carriers have begun to exploit the flying public, especially families.  Most families want or need to sit together, so not obtaining seat assignments in advance might cause significant problems on the day of departure.

The biggest offender to date has been Spirit Airlines.  As you can see below, you can’t obtain seat assignments until check-in (24 hours in advance of your flight) without paying a fee.  To add insult to injury, Spirit Airlines only allows a random seat to be generated for free at check-in, without the ability to change it.  This nuance makes them the least family friendly domestic airline in this roundup.

To their credit, Southwest Airlines has taken the extra step of singling out families by guaranteeing those traveling with young children a priority boarding spot between their “A” and ”B” boarding groups.  Of course, this means that they have eliminated priority boarding for families, so I’m not sure if this is really supposed to be an “enhancement”…you decide.

Keep in mind that most fees are per segment, not each way, so if you have a connecting flight, you’ll pay that fee twice.  The chart below outlines advance seat reservation fees as well as premium seat fees for domestic airlines as of February 25, 2010.   First or Business Class upgrades may also be available for an additional fee.

So, as you can see, not all airlines are created equal when it comes to fees.  Make sure that you take into account all fees when choosing the “least expensive” fare.  Check out our roundup on checked baggage fees and stay tuned for future reviews of even more fees being imposed by the airlines!

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