Den­zil Mo­hammed

Just when you thought air trav­el couldn't get any worse, it did: more con­fu­sion, ex­ploita­tion, ma­nip­u­la­tion and the oc­ca­sion­al mo­lesta­tion. But wait! What's that in the sky? A bird? A plane? Well, it is a plane: an old Amer­i­can Air­lines plane paint­ed "RED." RED­jet is fi­nal­ly here to save us from the night­mar­ish ex­pe­ri­ence fly­ing has be­come. Or is it? First there were the TSA per­son­nel who pushed their fin­gers in tod­dlers' pants. Then a woman, in the midst of her pat-down, "grabbed and twist­ed" a se­cu­ri­ty agent's breast. Next, a 95-year-old can­cer pa­tient had her "wet and firm" adult di­a­per forcibly re­moved. Se­cu­ri­ty is on­ly the be­gin­ning of pas­sen­ger abuse. Up un­til last week, US air­lines were pock­et­ing an ex­tra US$28 mil­lion dai­ly thanks to a US Con­gress dead­lock. Avi­a­tion tax­es were not be­ing charged to pas­sen­gers, so air­lines in­creased their fares by the tax amount, pock­et­ing the dif­fer­ence.

In fact, air­lines world­wide prof­it­ed US$21 bil­lion last year from the "an­cil­lary fees" they charge. These fees not on­ly put a heavy strain on our pock­ets, but al­so make the book­ing process hell­ish­ly com­plex. Take Ire­land's Ryanair, the bud­get air­line Eu­ro­peans love to hate. One-fifth of its rev­enue comes from an­cil­lary fees. These in­clude eu­ro 40 for print­ing a board­ing pass at the air­port, de­spite a eu­ro 6 check-in fee per per­son, per flight, when book­ing on­line. In-flight bev­er­ages can cost ten times the re­tail price, and the seats don't even re­cline. Oth­er Ryanair pro­pos­als: adding six more seats per air­craft by elim­i­nat­ing two of the toi­lets; mak­ing pas­sen­gers pay to use the toi­lets; and re­design­ing air­craft to ac­com­mo­date "stand­ing pas­sen­gers."

The cost of "low-cost"

Many of us haven't heard of Ryanair, but it is apt to men­tion. RED­jet's CEO Ian Burns "dreams of cre­at­ing a Caribbean ver­sion of Eu­rope's cut-rate Ryanair," says a re­cent news­pa­per re­port. He means it, of course, in the low-cost as­pect. That's why he calls RED­jet the "con­sumer cham­pi­on," re­it­er­at­ing the po­ten­tial for a US$9.99 fare, thus "re­duc­ing the cost of trav­el­ling in the re­gion by up to 60 per cent." And he firm­ly be­lieves in this busi­ness mod­el. In a YouTube video in­ter­view with Er­rol Fabi­an, Burns says his is, in fact, the "most sus­tain­able, prof­itable air­line mod­el in the world..." They're a boast­ful bunch. But Tri­nis like a good deal. The Burns are talk­ing our lan­guage. But when you take a clos­er look you might find less Eng­lish and more Greek.

As a "low-cost" (read: bud­get/no frills) air­line, CEO Burns calls his an "opt-in pol­i­cy, which means you pay for what you get." Look­ing in­to a re­turn trip to Bar­ba­dos in De­cem­ber, I found a base fare of US$55 each way, a far cry from US$9.99. Then there are the air­port se­cu­ri­ty charge, sales tax, pas­sen­ger use charge, con­course fee, air­port ter­mi­nal charge...For what­ev­er rea­son, the pas­sen­ger ser­vice charges alone to­tal US$73.94: more than a flight it­self. These are things over which RED­jet has no con­trol. But then the air­line de­liv­ers its sur­prise. Hid­den fees? A "VIP pass" sup­pos­ed­ly lets you sit where you want-for an ex­tra US$10. In big, red, all-cap­i­tal let­ters, you read that you get to car­ry one hand­bag and lap­top on­board for "free." Jump for joy.

What RED­jet calls "ex­tras" in­cludes lug­gage, even car­ry-on lug­gage. Lug­gage fees are de­ter­mined by size and weight, up to US$25 each. But that's the on­line price. While RED­jet al­lows two checked pieces, you can on­ly pay on­line for one piece. For the oth­er piece, you must pay for it at the air­port, which car­ries pric­ing up to three times more than the Web site. So trav­el­ling with two large suit­cas­es could po­ten­tial­ly cost you US$120. And then, for your con­ve­nience and lazi­ness, RED­jet will send a text mes­sage reser­va­tion con­fir­ma­tion to your phone-for an ex­tra US$1. The on­ly con­ve­nience, in fact, is be­ing able to book on­line. On­line book­ing costs the air­line al­most noth­ing. But it does cost the pas­sen­ger: US$5 per pas­sen­ger, per flight. And yet nowhere in the fee break­down is this ex­plic­it­ly men­tioned.

So air­fare, tax­es, RED­jet's hid­den fees, text mes­sage, pri­or­i­ty board­ing (which equates to a seat as­sign­ment), one car­ry-on and one suit­case to­tals around US$285. At the end of this ex­haust­ing, un­fa­mil­iar book­ing process, RED­jet isn't such a steal of a deal. The "opt-in" an­cil­lary costs run in­to the ridicu­lous. It is some­thing to which West In­di­ans are not ac­cus­tomed, but which to­day's more com­plex world ne­ces­si­tates: a keen­er eye, a more guard­ed pock­et and a wea­ri­er dis­po­si­tion. Not every­thing that glit­ters is gold. And giv­en that Ryanair is ap­par­ent­ly RED­jet's in­spi­ra­tion, the fu­ture looks any­thing but gold­en for pas­sen­gers. If it's one thing RED­jet has giv­en us, it's al­ter­na­tives. So be­fore you give in to the low-cost al­lure, ex­plore your op­tions. Oth­er­wise, you may on­ly be see­ing red. To wit: the to­tal for the same flight on Caribbean Air­lines was US$140 cheap­er, half RED­jet's cost.