Well, if you haven’t heard or read already, American Airlines is going to start charging a separate fee for checking even one bag. It’ll cost $15 for that first bag beginning with tickets purchased on June 15th, unless they decide to make the fee retroactive as well. This announcement has garnered a lot of attention in the media as well as across the net with most people upset about it.

I, on the other hand, am not surprised at all by this and don’t really see much wrong with it. Most people just view this as a price increase which is never welcomed by the public. But haven’t we been expecting prices to go up anyway? I mean, with the price of fuel continually going up and all the doom and gloom in the market, airline prices were going to go up anyway.

So if the prices were going to go up anyway, why would you want them to go up across the board for everyone equally regardless? If you usually travel with a lot of baggage, that’s why. If you check two bags as well as carry one on, of course you’d like the cost to be evenly distributed over all passengers. But if you’re going to travel with just a small carry on, I’d suspect that you’d rather not have to help foot the bill for people who are shipping more with them.

If you look at air travel as what it actually is, it makes a little more sense as well. It’s a transportation service. You’re essentially shipping yourself and some of your things from one place to another. If you go to the post office, UPS, or FedEx and ship something, you’ll naturally pay more for a larger package than for a smaller one.

So don’t be enraged by this pricing change. Airfare was going to go up anyway; it’s just now going up disproportionately for those who are packing more with them. Just be grateful for now that they don’t make you get on a scale yourself and charge by the pound…

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