Winging It: Extreme a la carte pricing: Airline toilet fee?

The airlines' enthusiasm for charging "a la carte" fees for services that once were included in ticket prices may be approaching its logical, customer-be-damned extreme.

Michael O'Leary, chief executive of Ryanair, a European carrier based in Ireland and known for very low fares, suggested recently that he was considering charging a buck or two for using the toilet on his planes. A Ryanair spokesman said later that his boss had spoken off the cuff a lot, but acknowledged that the airline had considered the idea.

This is no surprise in Ryanair's case. O'Leary is the same CEO who pioneered the idea of advertising fares of just a few dollars, then slapping you with fees for everything else. Ryanair doesn't charge just for checking bags and soft drinks, but also for booking online and using a credit or debit card.

The concept of a la carte pricing has been used for several years by discount airlines, but really took off when airline fuel costs spiked last summer. Customers sympathized and didn't seem to mind much. But I've received dozens of complaints since then, asking why the fees are not only still in place but have actually proliferated.

In this country, Spirit Airlines recently received Transportation Department approval to charge a "passenger usage fee" of up to $10 for buying a ticket anywhere except at a Spirit airport ticket counter. The federal agency, which fined Spirit $40,000 last year for trying to impose several other fees without disclosing them in advertised prices, approved the ticketing charge, but required Spirit to disclose it in ads.

We know of only one recent example of an airline's abandoning one of its a la carte charges. US Airways has given up trying to get passengers to pay for coffee, soda, and bottled water on its flights.

In an obliquely worded news release, US Airways said, in effect, that it still believed charging for coffee was a good idea, providing it to those who want it and not charging those who don't.

But the airline said it rescinded the policy because other carriers didn't follow its lead and because it was "distracting" from its other recent service improvements. I suspect customer complaints and threats not to fly US Airways had something to do with it, too.

Fees for checking luggage are one of the greatest annoyances to travelers who have communicated with me. One frequent business traveler wondered if eagerness to help airlines increase fee revenue may even extend to Transportation Security Administration officers at Philadelphia International Airport.

J. Peter Fiorella of Turnersville, an executive with a software firm, said agents wearing TSA uniforms told him as he waited in the Terminal B checkpoint line Feb. 23 that his carry-on bag was too large and that it would have to be checked. He protested that he had carried the bag on multiple US Airways flights for the last five years.

Fiorella said the agents told him that the regulations for the size of a carry-on bag had changed and that the bag must be checked. He returned to the US Airways ticket counter and checked it but was spared the $15 fee because of his frequent-flier status.

Fiorella suspected that US Airways and TSA agents were conspiring to drive customers back to the ticket counters to check bags. On the same trip, he said, TSA agents in San Diego and San Jose, Calif., allowed him through checkpoints with the bag.

A TSA spokeswoman said that TSA agents were interested only in what was in the bag, not its size. She said that without knowing the names of the agents, which Fiorella didn't have, she couldn't substantiate what he said.

A US Airways spokesman said the uniformed agents probably work for a vendor to the airline, not TSA, and it's their job to scan the security lines for oversize bags. The agents were right when they told Fiorella that the rules had changed.

US Airways recently reduced the total linear dimensions (length plus width plus depth) of allowable carry-on bags to 45 inches from 51 inches, the same standard most airlines use. So it's time to get out the tape measure if you don't want to be sent back to the ticket counter to check the bag and probably pay a fee.

The fees for checked bags are having at least one beneficial consequence for travelers: The chances of an airline losing yours are going down. The Transportation Department says the number of "mishandled bag reports" by airlines dropped by a third, to 3.1 million last year from 4.4 million in 2007.

Determining all of an airline's fees isn't easy. You have to search in multiple places on their Web sites. Two sites with good lists of all major airlines' fees can be found at www.smartertravel.com and www.farecompare.com.

Take a look and you'll see that the only domestic carrier left offering a buffet of services, and not a la carte pricing, is Southwest Airlines.