When Marius Vogelfanger got an e-mail from Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) before a recent flight from Bergamo Airport, near Milan, Italy, he thought it was sending it to him as a courtesy.
"Don't forget to check-in online from 15 days up to 4 hours prior to your scheduled flight departure," it said.
But the e-mail failed to tell Vogelfanger, a construction professional who works in Washington, what would happen if he and his travel companion failed to check in online.
When they arrived at the airport, they were given some bad news by an airline representative: They'd have to print out their boarding passes, and it would cost them.
"We were told to go to the cashier and pay €120 for the printing of two boarding passes," he says. "We paid this outrageous amount since we had no choice. We had to be on that flight."
Sixty euro ($72) to print out a boarding pass? What are they smoking at Ryanair?
Before I get to the answer, here's the sad truth: The boarding pass fee isn't new, although many passengers like Vogelfanger will experience it for the first time this summer. The discount airline quietly added the fee late last year. Spirit Airlines (www.spirit.com) charges a more modest $5 to print a boarding pass and $1 to use its electronic kiosks at the airport.
What's new is that this funny airline math is leading to windfall profits. For example, when Spirit Airlines reported its latest quarterly numbers, it noted that the average base ticket revenue per passenger flight segment slipped 1.1% to $81. But at the same time, the average non-ticket revenue jumped 18.6% to $51 per passenger flight segment.
In other words, the average Spirit ticket costs $81, but the average passenger also pays $51 in fees, including, at times, the silly print-a-boarding-pass fee.
These so-called "ancillary" fees are big business for the airline industry. A recent survey found that worldwide, the airline industry collected $22.6 billion in ancillary revenues last year, up 66% from two years ago.
If you're a laissez-faire free marketer, you're probably saying to yourself: "Isn't that great? The airline industry has finally figured out a way to make money?"
Not so fast. I'm a believer in the free market, too, but there's a right way and a wrong way to do it.
And not telling Vogelfanger he'll have to shell out another $72 to print out a boarding pass -- that's the wrong way. But when he complained to Ryanair, it said it would keep his money, thanks very much, even though he'd paid more for the passes than for the original ticket.
I'll say it again. The boarding passes cost more than the ticket.
"The answer was that we didn't follow their policy and therefore no refund is granted, nor any explanation or apology," he says.
Granted, Ryanair discloses the boarding pass printout fees on its website, as does Spirit. But who has the time to surf the Internet, pre-flight? Ryanair, and airlines like it, know that. They're profiting from it.
Beyond that, though, something else has quietly slipped away from the discussion of airline fees: Whatever happened to common sense?
Do you really expect us to believe that a sliver of paper and a little printer ink costs $72? Or even $5?
I can't make that case, sorry.
What we have here is the free market run amok, one boarding pass at a time. It's a perversion of capitalism, not unlike the military being billed $500 for a screwdriver. It happens because an unscrupulous company thinks we aren't paying attention, and in many instances, we aren't.
Of course it doesn't cost $72 to print a sheet of paper. It doesn't take much common sense to know that. It's remarkable that no regulatory agency -- here or in Europe -- has stepped forward to say, "That's ridiculous. Enough, already."
Christopher Elliott is the author of "Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals" (Wiley). He's also the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine and the co-founder of the Consumer Travel Alliance, a nonprofit organization that advocates for travelers. Read more tips on his blog, elliott.org or e-mail him at chris@elliott.org. Christopher Elliott receives a great deal of reader mail, and though he answers them as quickly as possible, your story may not be published for several months because of a backlog of cases.)
