Air Fare trends worldwide

by Graham Email

The EU has been busy passing a law to enforce full price transparency on airlines and airline resellers, after studies showed that a large percentage of them were failing to provide the full final cost of airline tickets, opting instead to advertise apparently-low-cost "price leader" tickets without adding on fuel surcharges, airport taxes etc.
This would probably be unpopular in the USA, where price transparency for air travel is a quaint relic, a footnote in aviation history. Any day now I half-expect to be asked to pay for the air that I breathe when I fly American Airlines, given their propensity for charging for any service or object as an addition to the base fare. While most of the larger airlines continue to nickel-and-dime travelers to death with additional charges for all sorts of services that used to be free, SouthWest Airlines is spanking their ass with its witty and pithy "bags fly free" series of commercials, which continues to perpetuate the meme of "little customer-focussed upstart runs rings around Leviathan Airlines". Despite years of this stuff, the larger US airlines seem to be clueless as to how to respond.