Ancillary Charges Save Down and Out Airlines

The ancillary revenue from the excess baggage charges and for priority boarding are now providing many airlines that are struggling in the current economy with the funds that they need to stay afloat. This extra cash boost is just what many airlines need to avoid making anymore cuts to their staff.

Analysts are now saying that 92 airlines saw their revenues rise by a massive 345 percent in 2008 thanks to these charges. Thus, many people may think that airlines like Ryanair, which is notorious for their stealth charges, would have came in first. However, Ryanair only placed third on the list of most revenue made from charges. Just ahead of Ryanair in amount of money made from charges was American Airlines. At the top of the list was Delta Air Lines, while also placing in the top 5 was Qantas.

When looking at the proportion of the total amount of revenue that is made from ancillary income by an airline, Ryanair ranked second with 19.3 percent of all of its income coming from these charges. However, the United States airline Allegiant Air came in first place with 22.7 percent of all of its income coming form these charges.

In a statement made by IdeaWorks, they said that ancillary revenue and baggage fees did not save the United States airline industry by itself. However, it is pretty easy to imagine that these numbers did help to make the recovery of the airline industry just that much faster.

For United Airways, they were able to generate an average €4.36 from checked baggage charges per United States domestic passenger. Other places like AirAsia X, which is based in Malaysia, made a lot of their extra cash from things like pre-ordered meals on long haul flights.