Let me rephrase that, under previous scenario the airlines were advertising a price that made their customers perceive it was cheaper than it really was. I'm sure the U.S. Department of Transportation would say this is exactly why the advertised price should include unavoidable fees and charges.
The key word here is may, full disclosure in most industries applies only to charges they will be charged (i.e. are unavoidable) rather than things they may choose that they can also (easily) choose to avoid.
Just want to make it clear that
I support the full inclusive pricing; my arguments given above was simply passing on what are the arguments against the change, which are mostly being spearheaded by the airlines.
The problem is that, as it is seemed to be perceived by the airlines (and perhaps other businesses, not necessarily travel related), customers make a good call on whether they will buy something or not based on the spot price. If the spot price
looks cheap, a customer is more likely to be drawn in to have a closer look, compared to if it looks more expensive upon which a customer may decide to just walk on by.
Airlines would rather say a lower price with a huge rider saying "plus taxes, fees and surcharges; baggage and food additional" rather than a higher price with a nice simple phrase "all inclusive" (or to that effect). It also helps them in that a customer doesn't know the exact amount of taxes/fees/surcharges, and only a subset of them probably know how much the first bag will cost or how much it is to get a deli sandwich on board (and for those that
do know, they are probably frequent flyers who escape the bag fee anyway). The uncertainty forces customers to at least go to the website and price up so that they can make a better decision. A customer presented with an all-inclusive price can make a decision without perusing the website and thus the airline loses a period of contact where it might have had a chance to secure a sale.
That's how I reckon the airline marketing / sales teams are looking at this latest reform as negative. They're trying to allay the blame off them, of course, by using the false guise of 'disclosure' (or lack thereof as they are accusing the regulators). I'd like to think (at least from a
per se viewpoint) that airlines are not out to maliciously mislead people with respect to their fares. They just want people to visit their website and have a look at their fares (just as a bricks and mortar store wants to keep people inside the store as long as possible, as with that they are increasing the chances of landing a sale). All inclusive pricing would appear to hinder that objective.
This whole argument is pretty rubbish to most of us but that's because we're used to inclusive pricing for a long time (sans auxiliaries like baggage for non-elites, credit card fees, insurance etc.). There's some merit in asserting that a good deal of the US travelling public will be rather "dumb"; when these changes are put into force, the public will look at gazetted fares and automatically think that fares have gone up by a few dollars rather than thinking that the fare includes the taxes that they had to book through to add in before.
