Brent Pin­heiro 

Brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt 

Fly­ing with Amer­i­can Air­lines (AA) soon and plan­ning to check a suit­case? Well, that’s go­ing to cost you a lit­tle bit more. The Dal­las-based car­ri­er an­nounced a US $5 in­crease in checked bag­gage fees ef­fec­tive for tick­ets is­sued on/af­ter Feb­ru­ary 20, 2024.

The first checked bag now costs US $35, and the 2nd checked bag fee will now cost US $45. This new price is valid for tick­ets booked for trav­el to/from Cana­da, the Caribbean, Mex­i­co, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, and Guyana. AA has al­so in­creased US do­mes­tic checked bag fees – 1st checked bag fee is now US $40 (US $35 if paid for on­line) and the 2nd checked bag fee is US $45. Car­ry­on bags re­main free for all itin­er­aries.  

Got an over­weight bag? That pric­ing struc­ture is see­ing some ad­just­ments as well. Ef­fec­tive April 17, 2024, if your bag weighs be­tween 50 and 53 lbs, it will cost US $30. Bags 53 to 70 lbs will con­tin­ue to at­tract a fee of US $100.  

Air­lines around the world have gen­er­at­ed bil­lions in an­cil­lary rev­enue from var­i­ous sources such as fees for seat se­lec­tion and bag­gage fees. Ac­cord­ing to a re­cent Forbes ar­ti­cle, air­lines earned US $117.9 bil­lion from these ex­tras in 2023, with bag­gage fees ac­count­ing for US $33 bil­lion alone.

Amer­i­can Air­lines says this is the first time it has ad­just­ed bag fees for first and sec­ond-checked bags since 2018. Ac­cord­ing to the air­line, cus­tomers who pur­chase pre­mi­um cab­ins on do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al flights will con­tin­ue to re­ceive com­pli­men­ta­ry bags.