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United Airlines is demonstrating that they play a mean game of follow-the-leader with an epic monkey-see monkey-do moment: Effective today (2/24/24), they are raising checked bag fees (as flagged by Loyalty Lobby). Is it a coincidence that this news comes the same week that American Airlines increased checked bag fees? Likely not. It’s very unfortunate that they decided to make this change with no notice at all on a Saturday, but there you have it.
United increasing bag fees effective 2/24/24
The new fees to check bags are as follows:
- 1st checked bag: $40 standard / $35 prepaid (free for United Silver or Star Alliance Gold and above and MileagePlus Explorer cardholders when using the card to pay for their ticket))
- 2nd checked bag: $50 standard / $45 prepaid
Tickets purchased prior to 2/24 are subject to the baggage fees in effect at the time of booking. For instance, I am currently in Hawaii on a trip I booked months ago (with Turkish Miles & Smiles miles!). My trip home still shows the previous checked baggage fees of $35 / $45 standard or $30 / $40 in advance.
The ever-increasing cost of checked bags on domestic tickets is a bummer to see, though by some measure it increases the value of the various ways you can avoid checked baggage fees:
- Many airlines (including United) offer a free checked bag for most of their airline credit card holders and some number of companions. Unlike other airlines, United requires that you use your United credit card to pay for the flight (or the taxes on an award) to get this benefit. Read more about free checked bags via credit card in this resource.
- Members with elite status typically get a free baggage allowance. How many and how much the bags can weigh varies from one airline to another.
- Having status with partners can help. Major airline elite status often includes a free checked baggage allowance when flying alliance airlines (such as Star Alliance Gold or oneworld Sapphire or higher). Similarly, United and Marriott have a partnership whereby Marriott Titanium members can match to United Silver and get a free checked bag on United.
- Choose a different airline or type of ticket. A basic economy ticket may not make sense when comparing ticket types in some cases. In other cases, it’ll make sense to consider something like Southwest Airlines, which includes free checked baggage for everyone.
It’s unfortunate to see the increase here, particularly for those accustomed to checking multiple bags. Thankfully, in my family, we have pared down to one checked bag on most trips (and my six year old is now wheeling around his own carry-on), so this change in policy won’t be hugely consequential for me, but I could see this adding up over time for some families.
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[…] days after JetBlue, United Airlines announced they were also increasing checked bag fees for the first bag to $40 with a $5 discount for prepaying at least 24 hours in advance. Honestly, […]
So bizarre how you always feel the need to include a selfie. Narcissist much?
Not narcissism at all. We’ve explained many times before that we’ve found that posts with a human face in the featured image get more traffic and Google seems to value original images over stock images, so we frequently do include pictures with our faces for featured images when we have them. That helps more people discover our content through Google including posts in their Discover section now and then. It helps with their algorithms for whatever reason, so we’ll probably keep doing it since we want people to find our content. In this case, the image isn’t even in the post itself, it’s just the featured image, so it shouldn’t affect your reading experience at all.
Thankfully you put your confused (ugly) face in the photo to help me interpret the text of the headline. Appreciate your sacrifice.
No problem – I got you!
The fair question is what the annualized rate of change is relative to inflation. The answer is that it’s about the same. Nobody have a cow.