How to reduce — or avoid — airline fees for checked bags

Checking a bag at the airport has gotten pricier for travelers — and harder to avoid.

A checked bag is one stored in a plane’s cargo hold during a flight. While that service was free in years past, it’s now standard for major airlines to charge for checked bags, experts said.

Major U.S. airlines started doing so in 2008, levying around $15 a bag, said Katy Nastro, travel expert at cheap flight alert platform Going.

Today, it’s about double: $30 to $35 for one checked bag, Nastro said. That means travelers who check a bag on each leg of a round-trip itinerary can add an extra $60 to $70 to the total cost of their basic fare. And rates generally increase for each additional checked bag.

Passengers paid about $6.8 billion in total baggage fees in 2022, the last full year for which data are available, according to the Bureau of Transportation. That’s up 17% from roughly $5.8 billion in 2019, even though fewer passengers flew on U.S. carriers in 2022, Bureau data show.

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“Unless baggage is included in a higher-class (premium economy, first, business class, etc.) ticket, passengers should expect to pay a fee,” Eric Napoli, vice president of legal strategy at AirHelp, which helps passengers file claims for airline compensation, explained in an e-mail.

Here’s some advice from travel experts on how to reduce those fees, and perhaps avoid them altogether.

There are a few airlines that still don’t charge for a checked bag.

Southwest, for example, is the one outlier in the U.S., experts said. The carrier allows two free checked bags.

The “Big Three” Gulf Airlines — Qatar Airways, Etihad Airways and Emirates — still offer free baggage, as does Air India, according to Aiden Higgins, senior editor of The Broke Backpacker…