United Airlines offer: Pay $249 a year to avoid checked-bag fees

Is there no end to airlines’ creativity in extracting money from us for services that once were free?

Apparently not, judging from the latest option that United Airlines announced today: Pay a $249 yearly subscription fee and you (plus up to eight people traveling with you on the same reservation) get to check up to two bags per person, per flight for free all year.

In fact, the so-called Premier Baggage program may be worth it, if you don’t mind handing United all that money up front. But you’ll need to do a little math to see if it might work for you. And you’ll need to join Mileage Plus, the airline’s frequent-flier program, too.

First things to note: Typically, certain high-mileage frequent fliers (and up to eight people traveling with them), plus passengers in first class and business class, are already exempt from fees for first and second bags. So this program doesn’t help them.  And United already lets coach passengers check two bags for free on some international flights, depending on the destination. As for other customers:

Who benefits: Potentially, families and groups who travel together and frequent fliers who don’t already qualify for fee exemptions.

For instance, by buying the Premier Baggage option, a family of four could get their money back, and then some, by flying one or two round trips per year, depending on how many bags they checked. A single traveler would need to fly three to seven round trips to offset the subscription fee, depending on the number of bags checked.

The math: United’s first-bag fees are $40 each per round trip on domestic flights, or $160 total for four people. Combined fees for first and second bags are $100 per person per round trip, or $400 total for four people. (These figures are based on paying the fees at the airport; if you check in and pay for your bags online, you save $5 or so per bag each way.)

Who doesn’t benefit: Infrequent fliers, light packers and inattentive online users. Why the latter? Because the fine print on the offer says that at the end of your subscription year, United will automatically charge your credit card for another year’s subscription “unless you have opted out of the auto-renewal feature.”

What United says:  “Checking bags used to be part of the ticket,” spokesman Rahsaan Johnson acknowledged. Then he added: “But you can still get to and from San Francisco [from L.A.] for $100, and that hasn’t changed for decades.”

He’s got a point: What else still costs the same as it did years ago?

— Jane Engle, assistant Los Angeles Times Travel editor

Photo: Travelers in line at the United Airlines terminal at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. Credit: Tim Boyle / Bloomberg news

Permalink | E-mail | Print | Add to My Trips

This entry was posted on Monday, October 5, 2009 at 3:08 pm by Jane Engle and is filed under Airline travel, Business Travel, Deals, Frequent Flier, Global, News, Tips & Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.