Chris Elliott points to a serious problem with frequent flyer tickets for parents of small children: Full-fare fees for lap infants.

Typically, the charge for carrying an infant on your lap on an international flight is 10% of the fare paid. The child doesn’t get a seat. But what’s the fare, if you’re paying with miles?

In the example Chris cites, the passengers are using miles to travel in business class to Asia. (Which is a great use of miles, I might add.) But United is calculating the infant fare using the full-fare business class ticket price. And 10% of the full-fare ticket comes to $1280.00. Ouch.

What airlines should do is introduce a separate mileage redemption tier for infants. Charge 10% of the miles that an adult would redeem, plus the taxes and fees. Airlines could even offer a cash alternative, by charging the cash equivalent of those miles. You can buy miles from the airline, after all, so why not use that rate as a metric for a cash payment?

But charging $1280 is just asinine.

Parents: Have you faced similar problems before? Have other airlines been more accommodating when you’ve booked with miles, charging a more reasonable rate for a lap infant? Have you bought coach fare tickets and simply forfeited the seat? Have you just shown up at the airport and tried your luck? Or have you found other strategies for getting around these rules? Hit the comments with your tales…

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United Airlines, intent on proving that anything — anything — is for sale, is starting to sell a package of elite-esque services for $25 a pop.

“Premier Line” is the latest in the “Travel Options by United” series of a la carte services available for purchase. Premier Line, starting at $25 per passenger each way, will let passengers:

• check in at the (generally shorter) business class line;
• use the (generally shorter) elite/first class security line;
• board in Seating Area 1, earlier than non-elite coach passengers.

Notably not included: Economy Plus seating.

Once again, United proves that it is willing to sell its lower-level elites down the river. Fly 25,000 miles, and you’ll still have to compete with those willing to pay a handful of bucks. Awesome.

There’s nothing that was once only available through loyalty which can’t be bought for one-shot cash payments. Nothing. They’ll sell you Economy Plus. They’ll sell you early boarding. They’ll sell you bonus miles. It’s all for sale.

On the flip side, United is offering infrequent travelers the opportunity to pay a little extra to get a little more service. Is it worth $25?

So, is this a slap in the face of lower-tier elite members, or a brilliant business decision? Hit the comments. Weigh in.

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For some time, traditional airlines have given the customers who provide them the most revenue a perk: early boarding. United, for example, started off putting its elite members into the first seating area. But at hub airports, there have been instances where nearly every person on board holds elite status. (I once flew from Chicago to DC and the gate agent announced that all but three passengers were in seating area 1… so they boarded old-school, by row.)

Boarding early has one single perk, increasingly important in an era of checked-luggage fees: Early access to the bins. If not for the bins, there would frankly be no reason to board early. You’ll be sitting in an aluminum tube for hours as it is, so why extend the torture? But the bins… the bins! We must win the battle of the bins!

So United is tinkering with its boarding order, beginning tomorrow, November 12, 2008. Via e-mail to customers:

Beginning November 12, our Premier Executive members and Star Alliance Gold guests will board before Seating Area 1 customers through the Economy Lane.

The new boarding order will be as follows: Global Services, 1K and customers sitting in United First will continue to board first through the Red Carpet Lane, followed by our United Business customers.

Our Premier Executive and Star Alliance Gold members will then be invited to board. After all of our most-valued guests are on board and getting settled, the regular boarding process of seating areas 1 through 4 will begin.

We strive to consistently reward you, our premium customers, for your loyalty. We hope that as a Premier Executive and Star Alliance Gold customer, you enjoy this added benefit.

Time for United to switch to letter-coded boarding groups… Obviously they decided they couldn’t downgrade those in group 1 to a different digit, but they now effectively have a group 0 and a group -1. Let’s switch to A through F, then.

In the meantime, the move isn’t garnering universal praise. The sticking point: the phrase “most-valued” in the e-mail above. Por ejemplo, Charles Cooper argues:

By favoring some customers more than others—I am not talking about nice club amenities but rather obvious distinctions being made at the gate—all you really accomplish is the raising up of a few in full view of the rest, and the rest is not going to be happy about it. If United’s goal is to keep their various levels of business and high-end travelers at the expense of their coach trade, then they are doing a great job. There are plenty of other airlines to choose from, enough so that flying United is quite optional.

Perhaps United is being particularly crass with their elitism — and the language they use to describe it — but name one airline in the United States that’s genuinely egalitarian. JetBlue gives their better customers better seats. Ditto Southwest. Seriously: Is any airline not rewarding their best customers?

The problem isn’t rewarding the rainmakers. But it could become problematic if non-elite customers feel slighted.

So has United gone too far in their multi-class system at the gate? Too far in their verbiage, as Cooper suggests? Or will anyone really care? Or even notice? Hit the comments!

Related:
- Faster boarding with an astrophysicist’s touch
- Magic carpet? United adds separate elite boarding area at gates
- Southwest guarantees A-group boarding passes to expensive tickets and elites

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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.

Much like politicians drop negative or uncomfortable news on a Friday afternoon, hoping that the media has checked out for the weekend, United Airlines decided that the wee hours of the morning of Election Day was the perfect time to announce the latest devaluation to its Mileage Plus program. Classy!

My e-mail inbox lit up with angry customers sending in the messages they received from UA. Special thanks to Patrick, Antonio, Zé, Sean, Dave, and the several anonymous folks who wrote in; it’s clear this set of changes is striking a particularly painful note.

So what’s changing? Miles required for free tickets: going up. Upgrades with miles: now with a co-payment. Elites get thrown a minor bone: 500-mile minimum reinstated for short flights, but only if you’re a Mileage Plus Premier or higher.

To the details:

“Free” tickets: Mileage Devaluation
For those who cash in miles for 25,000 domestic economy class tickets, there’s no meaningful change. But for those who try to get a little better value for their miles (and if you’re gonna play the game, you might as well play it right, if I may paraphrase Kenny Rogers), you’re in for some disappointment.

Except for the domestic economy ticket, it’s all going to cost you more. Most economy tickets to other parts of the world are going up 5000. But it gets really brutal in business and first class: 25,000 more miles to fly business to Europe. 25,000 more to fly business to Australia. 30,000 more to fly business to Japan. 35,000 more for other parts of Asia.

This is huge inflation, and it’s being applied inconsistently: Some routes are getting absolutely smacked, while others (like domestic economy) are either ignored or barely touched.

For the before-and-after, compare the old chart and the new chart.

Upgrades: Now accompanied with cash!
American Airlines got this bad idea rolling, but United is “perfecting” it. Fees of $50 in the Lower 48, but up to $500 ON TOP OF miles for Hawaii or international flights. On the plus side, you can upgrade any ticket starting July 1, 2009, regardless of booking class. (Previously, it was just the highest fares that were eligible for upgrade.) But what’s not clear is why some tickets might cost $250 to upgrade, while others cost $500. (Details are promised as the July 1 implementation date gets closer. I doubt they know, yet, what they’re planning.) Note that these are co-pays each way. And note also that upgrading from paid business to first doesn’t cost you squat. But if you’re moving from economy to business or first, using miles for upgrades is a much harder sale. See the whole list of fees here.

500-mile minimum
If you’re an elite with UA, you get your 500-mile minimum mileage earn on short flights. Nice: they’re reinstating the minimum earning levels retroactively. But… If you’re not an elite, enjoy your piddly accrual, sucka.

We’re pissing on you and calling it rain
Most offensively, here’s how they phrase the changes in their e-mail: “The changes to the Mileage Plus program for 2009 will reward our premium customers with highly competitive benefits, while responding to increased demand for United’s new international first- and business-class cabins.” Yes, we all feel rewarded with benefits, don’t we?

One note: You can avoid these higher rates and new fees by booking before December 31, 2008. Do it. Spend ‘em. Go. Do it now.

See also Gary Leff and lucky for their takes on the changes to UA MP. The reviews are in. It ain’t pretty.

Remember when the airlines banded together to encourage customers to help them lobby Congress to ban “speculation,” i.e., hedging, or futures contracts, in the oil market? Well, obviously some of these airlines know how to play the market better than others. Case in point:

At the conference, Delta Air Lines Inc. president and chief financial officer Ed Bastian told investors that Delta should report a third-quarter gain from its fuel hedging activities. That contrasts with UAL Corp., parent of United Airlines Inc., which warned Wednesday that it will record noncash hedging losses of more than $500 million as it records the drop in the market value of its hedges.

A-ha. That helps explain why United is raising fees even in the midst of dropping oil prices. Brilliant. They mess up their investments, but they penalize the customer and blame the oil market. Spin, spin, spin.

So where’s the bailout for the airlines that lost money?

I’m only half-kidding. Given what’s happened in the last week in our financial markets, I would be dismayed, but unfortunately not surprised, if United (or other airlines that are hemorrhaging cash) would come to the US Treasury, hat in hand, asking to be relieved of their debts and obligations.

While they’re at it, why not shut down the oil futures market, like they were lobbying for a few weeks ago?

The taxpayer would be on the hook for another $700 billion blank check of good money chasing after bad. After all what’s another currency-crushing socialization of corporate losses that saddles future generations with unimaginable debts, when you’re already knee-deep bailing out your corporate friends?

Related:
- Oil is lower. Will airline fees be dropped?
- Airlines, unable to manage risk, scapegoat oil markets
- United, addicted to oil excuse, raises checked bag fee