Between shelling out hundreds of dollars
in airfare and forking over even more for ancillary fees, travelers are
already spending more than they have in years for plane tickets. And
that’s about to get worse.
Starting on July 21, the Transportation
Security Administration — you know, the folks who are in charge of
confiscating your shampoo at the airport and taking you aside for an
“additional screening” — will more than double the mandatory fee they
charge many passengers and will no longer cap these fees. Under the old
law, the fee, which is used for security, was $2.50 for each leg of a
flight with a $5 cap on each one-way trip or a $10 cap on each round
trip. But beginning July 21, the fee is $5.60 for each leg of a flight
and that is not capped; if your layover is more than four hours on a
domestic flight or 12 hours for international destinations, that counts
as a second leg of the flight and you will be charged an additional fee.
While that may not sound like a lot,
consider what this could mean for your wallet. If you book a domestic
round trip and have two total connections (and the layover is four hours
or more during each connection), you’ll end up shelling out nearly $25
to the TSA. That jacks up the average domestic airline ticket price by
more than 5%.
No comments:
Post a Comment