Bring on the bunnies!(VOX POPULIST) (Airlines profits) (Column)

• Author: Hightower, Jim

If you take the word f-r-e-e and rip the "r" out of it, what do you get? Two things, actually: You get "fee"--and then you get mad.

This is happening to millions of airline passengers who are discovering that the advertised price of a ticket is not the half of it. Beaucoup fees have been added, charging us for items that previously were (and still should be) free. People's rage-ometers zing into the red zone when they see that these fees-for-former-freebies will often more than double the cost of a trip.

Top executives of airline corporations have learned to goose up prices and profits, (as well as their own pay) by nickel-and-diming customers. Only their fees are way more than nickels and dimes. For example, if you schedule a flight, but something comes up and you have to change the time, day, or destination of your trip--BAM!--airlines zap you with a $200 fee. Basically for nothing! Computers quickly make the change, which costs the corporation a mere pittance. But rather than graciously accommodating your need and making you a satisfied customer, they pick your pocket and make you angry.

Gouging and infuriating ticket buyers might seem like a poor business model for the long run, but airline CEOs these days insist that their primary duty is to make their major stockholders happy by maximizing short-term profits. And, indeed, the ripoff is very lucrative for the corporate elite. Airlines pocketed nearly $3 billion last year just from fees they charged passengers who needed to alter their flights.

In one of Stephan Pastis's "Pearls Before Swine" comic strips, his character, "Rat," develops a smart phone app that I want. As Rat explains it: "Whenever your bank charges you some stupid fee for something, you just tap this little button here." Oh, says another character, does the app file a complaint? "No," Rat replies, "it summons a herd of bunnies that parachute in and eat the bank's CEO."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Now that's a useful app! I'd also want it to sic the bunnies on today's airline...