Delta hiking fees for first and second checked bags on domestic flights

Delta hiking fees for checked bags

ATLANTA — Attention air travelers: That tug at your wallet is about to happen again, courtesy of the world’s biggest airline.

Delta Air Lines Inc. is raising its fees to check your first bag on a domestic flight by $8 and the second bag by $7. That will mean $23 for the first bag and $32 for the second.

It will continue to cost you even more if you don’t pay the fees in advance on the airline’s Web site. Delta is calling that add-on a surcharge — $2 for the first bag and $3 for the second. You will have to pay the surcharges if you check your bags at an airport ticket counter, kiosk or curbside.

The new fees are for travel beginning Tuesday on tickets purchased on or after Jan. 5. Tickets purchased before then, regardless of when the travel begins, are subject to the current fees — $15 for the first bag and $25 for the second.

The domestic bag fee increases apply to travel in coach within the 50 states, U.S. Virgin Islands, Canada and Puerto Rico.

Elite frequent fliers, first class fliers and certain other customers, including active military personnel on deployment, are exempt from the fees.

A Delta spokeswoman called the airline’s fees “competitive” with other carriers.

U.S. carriers began in earnest imposing fees on checked bags and other once-free amenities in 2008 to help combat rising fuel prices. The fees continued, and in some cases increased, even after fuel prices plummeted. Now, oil prices are on an upward trend again, though are nowhere close to their peak at $147 a barrel.

Benchmark crude for February delivery settled at $82.52 a barrel on the Nymex Monday.

The upward trend in fuel prices comes at a time when airlines were hoping to gain some positive momentum from the improving U.S. economy. U.S. carriers, including Delta, over the next two weeks will be releasing their fourth-quarter and year-end 2009 financial results.