U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, confronted executives of America’s major airlines for charging billions in nonsensical fees and harassing passengers who have already paid for their flights.
“You guys do appreciate that flying on your airlines is a disaster, don’t you?” Hawley said. “Flying on your airlines is horrible. It’s terrible experience.”
Hawley called out Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines for charging customers radically different bag prices.
“You made clear that money is your bottom line—I get that. But, why is it that you’re charging some people, what, triple, quadruple the amount [for luggage]?” Hawley asked.
Hawley continued to press Spirit and Frontier’s executives on the “bounties” they have historically paid gate agents to enforce carry-on bag policies and penalize passengers—including kicking customers off of flights.
Representatives of American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Frontier Airlines and Spirit Airlines attended the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing. CBD News reported that the five carriers took in $12.4 billion in seat fees between 2018 and 2023.
“Last week was the busiest, or certainly one of the busiest, of our travel weekends,” U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, said. “18 million people in the air, and many of them frustrated and infuriated, not just by delays and cancellations—some of them inevitable—but by fees that seemed to be sky high with no prospect of landing. In fact, they feel with more than understandable justification that they are piggy banks to be shaken down by these skyrocketing fees that seem to have no connection to any costs that the airlines incur. In fact, our investigation shows they have no connection to actual costs that the airlines are bearing.
“The five airlines here today generated $25.3 billion in checked bag fees over the past six years,” Blumenthal added. “In fact, airlines have forced parents to choose between sitting apart from their minor children and paying an extra fee.”