Goniffs for the day

Tyler Falk has a SmartPlanet article about airline fees:

Airlines continue to grow their revenue from passengers paying for things like checked luggage, extra airline miles, and seats with additional legroom.
A new report from IdeaWorks Co. shows that the 53 airlines that report revenue from ancillary fees — any fees collected that aren’t tickets sales — increased to $27.1 billion in 2012, from $22.6 billion (from 50 airlines) in 2011. The uptick was aided by more European airlines taking advantage of the additional fees.
And while budget airlines were some of the first to cash in on extra fees, it’s the larger airlines that are now making the most from ancillary revenue.
Here are the airlines with the largest total ancillary revenue:

Still, budget airlines are the ones seeing fees account for the largest chunk of their revenue:

Revenue from ancillary fees has grown substantially since 2007, when the first report showed 23 airlines with revenue of $2.45 billion. The largest jump in revenue came between 2009 and 2010, when the 47 airlines reporting saw ancillary revenue increase by nearly eight billion dollars.

Rico says this is why he'll pay to get driven to Baltimore, just to fly Southwest and avoid paying the first-bag fee... (Is it a wash? Yes, but Rico would rather pay a friend than those thieves at USAirways.)