Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images By DAVID KOENIGIt will soon cost you money to check a bag on JetBlue if you buy the cheapest level of tickets.
JetBlue Airways (JBLU) said Wednesday that it will create three ticket classes beginning in the first half of 2015, and only the top two include at least one free checked bag.
JetBlue executives declined to give a price for the ! bag fee, but they said pricing would fluctuate with demand. They said fewer than half of JetBlue passengers check a bag.
The airline will also add 15 seats to its Airbus A320 planes, increasing capacity to 165 from 150, and reduce average legroom to 33 inches between rows from more than 34 inches. The retrofit of cabins will start in late 2016, take two years and still leave more legroom than in the main cabins of bigger airlines, JetBlue executives said.
JetBlue expects that the new fare classes and bag fees will generate more than $200 million a year in operating income, and the extra seats will raise another $100 million a year.
JetBlue announced the changes as it met with investors in New York. JetBlue has been under pressure from investors to boost revenue.
In afternoon trading, shares of the New York-based airline were up 55 cents, or 4.3 percent, to $13.27. They hit a 52-week high of $13.48 earlier in the session.
Other big airlines have! added fees on checked bags since 2008.
JetBlue's move will leave Southwest (LUV) as the only large U.S. airline that allows all passengers to check at least one bag for free. Southwest CEO Gary Kelly has said the lack of bag fees has attracted enough additional passengers to more than offset money that would be raised by fees.JetBlue also announced that it would delay 18 Airbus jets that were scheduled for delivery from 2016 to 2018 until 2022 and 2023 to cut capital spending by more than $900 million through 2017.
The news on fees and legroom comes just two months after JetBlue announced that CEO Dave Barger will step down in February and be replaced in February by the company's president, Robin Hayes. S&P Capital IQ analyst Jim Corridore praised Hayes on Wednesday, saying that the incoming CEO was showing a focus on boosting revenue and being careful on spending.
The U.S. airline industry is reaping huge profits due to full planes and modest increases in fares. Airlines ha! ve kept planes full and avoided profit-slashing fare wars by limiting their expansion plans.
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After you check in, the room phone rings, allegedly from the front desk. There's a , the operator says, please give me the account numbers again. To pull it off, all a criminal has to do is trick their way through a hotel switchboard and catch a patron in the room. If you get a call like this, hang up, call the operator, and ask if there's a problem. That's a good habit at home, too. Hang up and call back. If there's really a problem, don't reveal your number over the phone. Just walk back to the front desk.
1. Call from the front desk -
"You find a pizza delivery flyer slipped under your hotel door," the FTC says. "You call to order, and they take your credit card number over the phone. But the flyer is a fake, and a scammer now has your info." I've not seen widespread incidence of this. it would be pretty brazen for ID thieves to physically walk around hotel hallways, where cameras might be used to identify them. Still, the same principal applies. Use a smartphone to double-check the phone number you see on any flyer placed in your room before you order pizza.
2. Pizza delivery -
The single easiest way for a hacker to hijack your computer is to and trick you into connecting to it. "Oh, free WiFi," you think. While that's a very real problem, it's also not terribly likely in a hotel room. After all, to be close enough to pull it off, the criminal's technology would in most cases have to be inside the hotel. That's a risky proposition. On the other hand, you might be visiting a lot of strange coffee shops on the road, where rogue Wi-Fi is a more likely possibility. It's always smart to you connect to, however. It might be wise to stick with your smartphone's connectivity, if that's possible.
3. Fake Wi-Fi network -
The , the more likely you will be charged a hefty Wi-Fi fee of $10-$15 per day. The new trick I've seen lately is for hotels to offer "free" Wi-Fi in the lobby but charge for access in the room. Best way to avoid that fee? Before you leave, make sure you know how to use your smartphone for broadband access.
4. Internet fees -
Hotels have a love-hate relationship with websites like Priceline (PCLN) or Expedia, which help them fill rooms,but systematically put downward price pressure on their inventory. Extra fees, added at check-in, are the hotels' way around this problem. Many folks pay online, only to find there's additional charges when they arrive at the hotel. Resort fees are often the biggest culprit. As the name suggests, this fee is most prevalent in restort-y places like Las Vegas.
5. Resort fees -
Hotels like charging to clean your room now, as if that's not included in the price. The worst part of the housekeeping fee: Often, housekeepers don't get any of the money.
6. Housekeeping fees -
More hotels are embracing travelers with pets, and they're charge $10 to $100 for allowing a pet in your room. If you use a site like Expedia to sort through pet-friendly hotels, make sure you manually check the fee. Not all pet-friendly hotels are created equal.
7. Pet fees -
This one bugs me. Some hotels put a safe fee on your bill, even if you never use the safe. You can ask that it be removed. Same for the newspaper fee.
8. Safe fees -
Finally, gone are the days when hotels could be canceled by 6 p.m. on the night of a reservation for a full refund. Cancellation policies are all over the map now and can even vary based on how the reservation was initially made. Never book a hotel without knowing what the cost of a breakup would be. Travel always involves adventure, which involves unpredictability, which means plans change. Make sure you plan for that.
9. Cancellation fees - More from credit.com:
Source : http://www.dailyfinance.com/2014/11/19/jetblue-charge-checked-luggage-bag-fees/
