American Airlines Raises Checked Bag Fees, Introduces “Surge Pricing”

American Airlines has been making changes pretty frequently since they finished merging their reservations systems as part of the merger with US Airways.

There were certain changes we expected, like a reduction in benefits for elite members and revenue based earning.  We also expected changes to partner earnings given the change in earnings on American flights, though I don’t think we expected it to happen with almost no notice.  That seems to be the norm now with American, which is a bit of a shame

Now that it’s become the norm, I wasn’t exactly surprised to see that baggage fees are changing this morning.  JonNYC is usually a very good source on American Airlines changes and sure enough, the changes are now reflected on the American Airlines website:

Quoting from the FlyerTalk post, here’s a full list of the changes we know about so far.

• $25 first checked bag fee now applies to all of Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean except for Panama City and San Salvador; previous exceptions such as Kingston, Mexico City, Santo Domingo are rescinded
• New $40 second checked bag fee to Guayaquil and Quito
• New $55 seasonal (high season from 7/26 to 8/10 and 12/9 to 12/24) second checked bag charge to Port au Prince, San Pedro Sula, San Salvador, and Tegucigalpa
• New $40 seasonal second checked bag charge to Cali

New fees apply to tickets issued or reissued on or after July 26.

I haven’t willingly checked a bag myself since the 90s, but this will surely affect a lot of travelers.

I got a bit of a chuckle about the introduction of higher bag fees during peak seasons for certain destinations.  I guess American Airlines is taking a page from Uber’s book on surge pricing…..

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