United Airlines, continuing on its quest to sell everything that isn’t bolted down, is rolling out a new way to check your bags: A $249/year subscription. And perhaps counterintuitively, I actually like this fee.

That is, I “like” this fee within the context of existing checked-baggage fees. Had that line not already been crossed, I would have been firmly opposed. But baggage fees are reality in American airspace, alas. (Southwest is still fee-free; JetBlue charges $20 for the second fee, but nothing for the first. Reward good behavior if you can.) But if you’re flying United, and you can’t fly with carry-on alone, then you’re looking at a fee.

And some — just some — people who would be paying that fee might benefit from this new program.

Dubbed Premier Bags, the deal will particularly appeal to tour groups on the same itinerary, or to a large family with lots of bags:

With Premier Baggage, you and up to eight companions traveling under the same confirmation number can check up to two standard bags each without fees, where applicable, every time you travel within the United States or internationally on United® or United Express® operated flights during the year.

The purchase of a Premier Baggage annual subscription does not waive fees that would ordinarily be assessed for oversized and overweight bags and does not cover the cost of checking more than two standard bags.

The deal seems better suited to large parties than to an individual who takes multiple trips. Since you pay $20 for the first bag and $30 for the second, an individual would have to take 5 trips with the full complement of two bags each just to break even. (Or, if you’re able to plan ahead and pay for your checked bags online, you get a $5 discount per bag. In which case even 6 trips with two bags each don’t quite break even.) Depending on your itineraries, you could be at Premier status before completing your five or six trips — after which you’d pay nothing for checked bags.

What concerns me is the phrasing: “introductory price.” If this is a trial balloon, then look for the price to go up to $299 or higher. It might — might! — still be a value for some people at that price, but that number of people will grow smaller and smaller.

So how does the $249 subscription grab you? Hit the comments.

Upgraded: Business reasons for business travel
Take this with a grain of salt the size of a Rubik’s Cube, but the U.S. Travel Association announced that research they commissioned shows that “every dollar invested in business travel generates an average $12.50 in increased revenue and $3.80 in new profits.” Slightly more specifically, “Executives cited customer meetings as having the greatest returns, approximately $15-$19.99 per dollar invested, with conference and trade show participation returns ranging from $4-$5.99 per dollar invested.” The entire report — which is based on a survey of perceptions of the impact of travel — is available here.

Upgraded: Baggage allowances on Gulf Air
This isn’t something you’ll see in North America anytime soon: Gulf Air is raising the weight limits for passengers with (complimentary!) checked baggage, effective October 1, 2009. And the increases aren’t small: +10 kg (22 lbs), in each class. That raises the total weight limits for First, Business and Economy to 50 kg, 40 kg, and 30 kg, respectively. Silver-level frequent fliers in Gulf Air’s frequent flyer program get another 15 kg; gold members get another 20 kg. Individual bags are still limited to a whopping 32kg (70 lbs) each.

Upgraded: Virgin Atlantic’s website
Sure, airline websites have been selling hotel reservations and rental cars. But now Virgin Atlantic is trying to go further by offering “add-ons” like passports and visas. Services are provided by CIBT, either via the Virgin website or call center. (Or, perhaps more accurately, centre.)

Upgraded: Paperless boarding passes at US airports
The number of airlines and airports that permit scanning boarding passes from your mobile device keeps increasing. The TSA blog compiles the who/where. Here’s the bottom line, airlines and airport codes:

Continental: IAH, DCA, EWR, BOS, AUS, SAT, CLE, LGA, LAS, SFO, ORD, LAX, SAN, FLL, TPA, PDX, PHX, CLT, MSY, RDU, MCO
Delta/Northwest: ATL, LAS, MEM, MSP, DET, SLC, CVG
Delta only: LGA
Northwest only: IND
Alaska: SEA
American: ORD, SNA, LAX

Upgraded: Punishments for abusive passengers in-flight
The FAA is increasing the size of the penalties it levies against unruly passengers, like the man who “dropped his pants and exposed himself to the female passenger sitting next to him, then punched her, according to an FBI affidavit.” Good.

Downgraded: Bali’s public health strategy
While a vigorous attempt to contain the spread of the H1N1 flu virus is understandable and sensible, Bali is taking the notion to a new level:

Upon landing at Bali’s airport planes will be taken to a remote aircraft parking area where the plane and its passengers will be sprayed with disinfectant. Passengers will then be disembarked and subjected to thermal scanners.

However, the Jakarta Globe is reporting that Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport is now requiring all arriving international air passengers to undergo a blood test. Nyoman Murtiyasa, the head of the airport’s health office, quoted in the Jakarta Globe said that all passengers arriving from overseas would be required to take a blood test at the airport.

Thermal scanners? Sure. Blood tests for everyone? Extreme. They make United States passport control seem downright lovable.

Downgraded: Airline uniforms
The airport administrators at Nepal’s Kathmandu Airport are taking an unusual step in an effort to reduce bribery: They are banning pockets in airline personnel uniforms. In a few months, expect reports of secret back-room sewing operations and black market tailoring.

Upgraded: Onboard duty-free, online check-in
Remember when airlines gave you extra miles for online check-in? It’s not coming back, alas. But Virgin Atlantic will give you a coupon for £6 off onboard duty free shopping when spending £30 or more. Whoo?

Downgraded: Jamaican sand wars
500 truckloads of white sand were stolen from a Jamaican resort development site in July 2008. Now, it’s going to trial, and other resort owners are among the accused. (hat tip to Veronica Stoddart)

Upgraded: Overview of disparate carry-on luggage rules
Steven Frischling at Flying with Fish has compiled a great list of 65 airlines’ carry-on baggage restrictions. Be sure to check the rules before your next flight.

Upgraded: Cruises with a theme
Downgraded: Pirates; Conscience
Finally, a cruise concept for the bloodthirsty: A Russian company is sponsoring pirate-hunting cruises. $5000 gets you on board, and you can rent AK-47s and buy ammo. The money quote: “They are worse than the pirates. At least the pirates have the decency to take hostages; these people are just paying to commit murder.”

Upgraded: Eclipse travel
THIS is a concept trip I could do: Special flights to view the upcoming solar eclipse. (Thanks, Kim!)

It hasn’t yet taken off in the US, but checked-luggage wrapping stations are cropping up in airports around the world. For a fee, an attendant will encase your suitcase in plastic wrap. A few small incisions to restore access to the handles and wheels, and off you go.

I’m admittedly a skeptic, though I jealously wonder how fat the margins are in this business.

On the one hand, I see the logic: If it’s wrapped tightly with plastic, it’s less likely to break open or be damaged by moisture. Some of these services, such as SecureWrap, also include some luggage insurance in the cost of the wrapping.

But how much protection is this, really? An airport security official looking to inspect your bag’s contents will just cut the plastic right off. A determined thief will do the same. How much protection is this, really? And for 6 euros (the price charged at Madrid) or 9 dollars (the price at JFK) per item, is this money well spent?

Hit the poll and the comments below the video.

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(Reading this via the RSS feed? Visit the site to vote.)

If you needed another reason to pack light on your Caribbean vacation, here’s a good one: On some routes, Air Jamaica will accept multiple checked bags, but will only deliver one bag on the flight you’re actually traveling on. The other bag, who knows? All this for the low, low price of $25! Huh?? Seriously.

On Monday, Air Jamaica started charging passengers $25 for the second checked bag on flights from New York to Grenada and Barbados, but the second checked bag won’t be on their flight.

Air Jamaica will transport the first checked bag on passengers’ flights, at no charge. All other bags will be transported within seven days and must be picked up at the airport, Air Jamaica said.

When will your second bag arrive? No promises, but you can check their website to see when the bag will be available for you to pick up. How very convenient…

While many airlines have restrictions on the number of bags they will accept during specific times of the year, often to/from Caribbean or Latin American airports, their restrictions impose a hard limit on the number of bags. The reason: At certain times of year, residents of those countries fly to/from the United States to visit friends and relatives, with large quantities of merchandise in tow. If all the bags and cargo were loaded, the plane would be overweight.

But Air Jamaica isn’t doing it that way. Rather, they’re accepting the bag, charging a fee, and then offering you the equivalent of a lottery ticket that your might see your bags eventually during your trip.

And a one week window for delivery? Your vacation might be over by the time your bags arrive. To charge a fee and not even have a sense of when your bags might arrive is chutzpah.

Alaska Airlines is taking a page from the Domino’s Pizza playbook and offering a delivery guarantee. But it’s not for pizza, it’s for checked bags:

Effective July 7th, if your baggage is not at the baggage claim within 25 minutes of your plane parking at the gate, you’re entitled to a certificate for either a discount code for $25 off a future Alaska or Horizon flight or 2,500 Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan bonus miles. If we don’t meet our 25 minute guarantee, simply see an Alaska or Horizon Customer Service Agent and let them know. They’ll ensure that you receive your Baggage Service Guarantee certificate or Bonus Miles.

Vouchers? That’s a “guarantee,” but not a money-back guarantee. Especially since Alaska just launched a fee per bag. If they charge cash, then a guarantee should offer cash refunds. Seems pretty straightforward.

There’s another catch: The guarantee is only valid from July 7 through December 15, 2009. Expect an extra effort from the baggage handlers during this window.

But wait, there’s more! And as an added bonus, the guarantee can be nixed if conditions aren’t perfect:

Alaska and Horizon reserve the right to suspend the BSG in cases of airport baggage system malfunctions, severe weather events, or other conditions out of the airlines’ control that limit or prohibit timely baggage delivery.

Call me a cynic, but I’d expect the invocation of that clause on a regular basis. But points for marketing creativity. Maybe soon we’ll learn have an airline teach us to Avoid the Noid.

Downgraded: Virgin America
Fun while it lasted, but Virgin America is starting to charge luggage fees like the old-school airlines have been doing for the past year. On the other hand, they sure let you check a ton of luggage: “$15 for the first checked bag and $15 for the second through tenth checked bag.” Tenth?!!

Upgraded: Dumbass tourist complaints
The Daily Telegraph offers up some linkbait with its list of 20 dumb tourist complaints. (Warning: it’s a slideshow, so it takes 20 clicks to read them all. I know you try to sell advertising with higher pageviews, guys, but it’s annoying, and no one sees the ads if they just keep clicking through the slideshow…) My favorite complaint might be: “It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England it only took the Americans three hours to get home.”

Upgraded: Yapta
Fare-tracking site Yapta will now track hotel rates, too. Since you can generally cancel a hotel reservation and book a new one at the lower rate, this could come in handy.

Upgraded: Pilot-cam, from 1909
Who knew that there existed first-person motion picture footage from a Wright Brothers plane? Wilbur Wright is at the controls in this 1909 film. It’s an amazing piece of history (sorry, copyright prevents embedding the video here).

Oh, Ryanair! There’s nothing about air travel that you won’t consider eliminating! Up next: the airport check-in counter.

European budget airline Ryanair wants to do away with airport check-in desks by the end of the year, saying most of its customers already check in online.

Passengers would still be able to leave their luggage at a baggage drop but everything else could be done over the Web, Ryanair Holdings PLC said Saturday.

“Ultimately, we want just one in five people to check in luggage,” Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary was quoted as saying in The Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Clearly, Ryanair doesn’t want you to check bags. Ever.

They’re already fighting hard to keep you from bringing your luggage. Remember that Ryanair already charges an airport check-in fee, as well as luggage fees that make American carriers’ luggage fees seem downright cheap. The maximum combined weight of all bags on Ryanair is 15 kg, or 33 lbs. (The US standard is 50 lbs. or 22.7 kg per bag.)

Ryanair charges £9.50 for the first bag and £19.00 for each additional bag, regardless of weight. Plus for every kilogram over 15 in your total baggage weight, Ryanair charges an extra £14. And these rates assume you booked on the airline’s website… if you booked elsewhere, double the base rate. These fees add up. Fast.

But apparently those prices aren’t sufficient disincentive. If check-in counters are such an attractive nuisance, what’s next? Maybe we should get rid of terminals entirely?

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Reader Tom K. asks:

The US Airways landing in the Hudson was amazing. Thank God (and the captain) for such a great outcome. I’m curious, what happens to the luggage that people left behind? I assume they’re not getting any of it back. What’s the compensation they receive for it?

I suppose that luggage is not at the top of your list if you’ve survived a crash. But perhaps, once the euphoria of survival wears off, passengers’ thoughts will turn to the stuff they left behind, both in the overhead bins and the cargo hold. The answers are in the contract of carriage (PDF), the rules governing the ticket.

The contract states the limits of the airline’s liability. From the contract:

Total liability for provable direct or consequential damages resulting from the loss, delay, or damage to baggage in US Airways’ custody is limited as follows:

A. for travel wholly between U.S. points, to $3300 per customer

B. for most international travel (including domestic portions of international journeys), to $9.07 per pound ($20 per kilo) for checked baggage and $400 per customer for unchecked baggage in the custody/control of the carrier.

Since this was a domestic flight, the “A” rules will likely apply to most passengers — $3300 per passenger maximum. That’s not a guaranteed payout (though, under the circumstances, the airline might just go ahead and cut checks in that amount…) Internationally-connecting passengers would be subject to “B.”

That’s not the end of the rules:

Unless protection is purchased (excess valuation), US Airways assumes no liability for valuable/commercial items including but not limited to: money, negotiable papers, securities, irreplaceable business documents, books, manuscripts, publications, photographic or electronic equipment, musical instruments, jewelry, silverware, precious metals, furs, antiques, artifacts, paintings and other works of art, lifesaving medication, and samples.

Only a travel insurance policy might cover such losses. Might. The credit card used to purchase the ticket may have some coverage, too.

And passengers had better file their claims soon, or they’ll get nothing:

No action shall be maintained for any loss, damage, or delay of checked baggage, unless notice is given in writing to the airlines involved within 45 days (21 days international) from the date of incident and unless the action is commenced within two years from the date of the incident.

These rules in this example apply to US Airways only. Each airline publishes its own rules, so check the contract.

Here’s hoping that this question remains purely academic — and no accidents are in your future.

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You win some, you lose some: United is cutting the fee for a second checked bag, while Delta is adding a fee for the first checked bag. And if you think carry-ons are business-as-usual, look out…

United was going to charge $50 for a second bag, but decided to curtail that and roll it back to $25. Good on ‘em.

Then there’s Delta, which recently merged with Northwest and is trying to align policies and procedures. In this case, they’re taking the lower road plowed by Northwest and imposing a fee for the first checked bag.

Readers may recall that I praised Delta’s logic in charging no fee for the first bag, but charging heftily for the second bag. The former policy kept the occasional checked bag part of the base fee, while heftily penalizing those who travel with the kitchen sink. Seemed reasonable then, still seems so now.

Delta suggests it didn’t see any increase in bookings as a result of the free-first-bag rule, so it deduces that customers weren’t “differentiating Delta as the only major airline not charging for a first checked bag,” according to their press release. (Ignore for the moment that they leave out Southwest, which doesn’t charge ANY baggage fees…) In any case, this is too bad.

Note also that paying a luggage fee doesn’t prevent your suitcase from being inspected by zoo animals: A Delta baggage handler recently opened the cargo doors to find a cheetah roaming around inside. The animal had escaped from its cage. No luggage was harmed, though it was almost certainly sniffed. Anyway…

Then there’s this change, governing carry-on bag size:

Carry-on rules also are changing. Continental recently reduced the allowable linear inches (length, plus height, plus width) from 51 to 45. That puts it in line with the linear inches allowed by American, Delta and Northwest. AirTran allows up to 55 linear inches, US Airways’ limit is 51 linear inches and Southwest’s limit is 50 linear inches. Many airlines also limit the weight of carry-ons to 40 pounds.

Expect these numbers to shrink, too, and expect airlines to start adding a fee for “oversize” carry-ons. They know that people are avoiding checked luggage because of the fee, and they’ll want their money one way or the other. That day is coming.

And just for the record, with oil trading around $60 per barrel today, the fuel-expense argument rings hollow for these luggage expenses.