These days, buying a flight ticket is kind of like buying a bowl of white rice. You can eat it, but you're probably going to want some kind of sauce on it. And a meat. And even after you pay extra to add those two things, all you have is just chicken rice. If you want bibimbap, you're probably going to have to dip into your kid's college fund.
If you think that's bad: travel abroad, where charging for carry-ons is custom, and if you want to use a debit or credit card to pay for your booking, you're going to have to pay a 3-5% fee. (Like, how else do you expect me to pay for this?)
Part of the problem with this "unbundling" of services is that it doesn't exactly make the flight aggregators that I analyzed in the previous post all that reliable. Even when you filter out basic economy tickets, you're still not seeing the total cost with add-ons – like baggage – and because there's no universal fee structure, what looks like a cheaper flight could actually be the more expensive option once you've finished adding what you need.
In this post I dive into some of the other hidden costs of flying that, after flying so much, I now consider before I book a ticket.
Those airline fees are just the tip of the iceberg.
