<story><title>Alaska Airlines to Buy Virgin America for $2.6B</title><url>https://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/virgin-america</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bogomipz</author><text>So this will likely be one of the first things that Virgin gets rid of along with 1 free checked bag.&lt;p&gt;It never ceases to amaze me that the airlines refuse to abandon this absurd policy of charging for a piece of checked luggage. When you look at when this practice was introduced of charging for checked luggage, the time it takes to board and un-board a plane has increased by about 20 minutes due to everyone trying to shove as much as possible into overhead bins. Perhaps this time axis doens&amp;#x27;t carry much weight for carrier? Although that would be hard to imagine. It seems like false economy to say charging $25 per luggage checked make sense when you have now added 40 minutes to each flight. I can count the number of times on one hand that my flight has left at its scheduled time even though it boarded on time.</text></item><item><author>mabbo</author><text>If anyone is taking over or merging with Virgin America, I&amp;#x27;m glad it&amp;#x27;s Alaskan. I&amp;#x27;ve never been unhappy with flying with them.&lt;p&gt;A couple examples of little things they do that are clever and should be copied by everyone else: check your bag at the gate 30 minutes before boarding and you can board early; a guarantee that your checked luggage will be in your hands 20 minutes after landing, or you get $20.&lt;p&gt;They are an airline that are trying things, experimenting.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Turing_Machine</author><text>&amp;quot;It never ceases to amaze me that the airlines refuse to abandon this absurd policy of charging for a piece of checked luggage.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;They do it because it works, and the reason that it works is that passengers (and flight-booking web sites) tend to sort the list of available flights by base price. Only.&lt;p&gt;It would be nice if the travel sites let you enter preferences: &amp;quot;How important is a decent meal to you?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;How important is a free checked bag to you?&amp;quot; and so on, but I haven&amp;#x27;t seen any sites like that. There&amp;#x27;s an opportunity for someone. :-)</text></comment>
<story><title>Alaska Airlines to Buy Virgin America for $2.6B</title><url>https://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/virgin-america</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bogomipz</author><text>So this will likely be one of the first things that Virgin gets rid of along with 1 free checked bag.&lt;p&gt;It never ceases to amaze me that the airlines refuse to abandon this absurd policy of charging for a piece of checked luggage. When you look at when this practice was introduced of charging for checked luggage, the time it takes to board and un-board a plane has increased by about 20 minutes due to everyone trying to shove as much as possible into overhead bins. Perhaps this time axis doens&amp;#x27;t carry much weight for carrier? Although that would be hard to imagine. It seems like false economy to say charging $25 per luggage checked make sense when you have now added 40 minutes to each flight. I can count the number of times on one hand that my flight has left at its scheduled time even though it boarded on time.</text></item><item><author>mabbo</author><text>If anyone is taking over or merging with Virgin America, I&amp;#x27;m glad it&amp;#x27;s Alaskan. I&amp;#x27;ve never been unhappy with flying with them.&lt;p&gt;A couple examples of little things they do that are clever and should be copied by everyone else: check your bag at the gate 30 minutes before boarding and you can board early; a guarantee that your checked luggage will be in your hands 20 minutes after landing, or you get $20.&lt;p&gt;They are an airline that are trying things, experimenting.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>calbear81</author><text>The nickel and dime&amp;#x27;ing has added up to about $60B a year in ancillary fees which represents about 8% of total airline revenues.</text></comment>