Southwest Airlines is charging another fee to customers. This time it's a no-show fee that customers will have to pay for not canceling their tickets before a flight. The airline is also increasing already fees.
Southwest Airlines is proud to be the only airline to not charge customers fees to change their tickets and the airline let customers apply their unused ticket price towards another trip, but many customers took advantage of this and the airline was left with empty seats. To try to change this, the airline is going to charge a fee to customers who don't cancel their airline tickets before not showing up for a flight.
"This one is pretty industry standard," Chief Executive Officer Gary Kelly said, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. "Customers understand we could all benefit from the opportunity to resell a seat. Once the airplane takes off and it's empty, we can't ever resell it."
Southwest is still one of the only airline that doesn't charge customers for their first two checked bags and they're not considering changing this in the near future.
However they're increasing fees for overweight bags from $50 to $100. Also those who want to check in early will have to pay $12.50 instead of $10.
Southwest's AirTrain Airways will also raise some fees. Fees to check a first bag will raise by $5 and $10 for the second bag, making the fees $25 for a first bag and $35 for a second.
The new fees are expected to raise $100 million in annual revenue, which is part of a plan to boost revenue by $1.3 billion in 2013. This goal is set as the airline hopes to cover higher labor and jet-fuel costs.
'We're looking for our revenue initiatives to take hold in 2013 in a way that would produce very strong earnings,' he said, adding that such a goal assumed a growing economy and stable jet fuel prices," Kelly said, according to the Daily Mail.
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