Senate Report Criticizes Airlines’ Junk Fee Practices

A senate subcommittee criticized major U.S. airlines for their use of “junk fees” in a report published Tuesday. 

The Senate subcommittee on investigations found that from 2018 to 2023, American, Delta, United, Spirit and Frontier raked in $12.4 billion from seating fees. The report found that seat fee revenue was second only to revenue from baggage fees, which totaled to $25.3 billion for the same airlines. 

However, in 2023, United collected more revenue from seating fees ($1.3 billion) than it did from baggage fees ($1.2 billion) for the first time. 

The committee, headed by Senator Richard Blumenthal, spent a year investigating the five carriers and found that airlines are increasingly relying on algorithms to set fees, causing them to vary significantly betwe