American Airlines quietly changed its family baggage policy - and it's made it more expensive
American Airlines has changed is family baggage policy to match-up with its "positive passenger bag match" policy.
American Airlines has made a change to their baggage policy that will impact entire families in one fell swoop. It comes as Donald Trump 'at risk of serious health condition' as photo shows stark change.
View from the Wing’s Gary Leff spotted the change and explained what it means for people traveling as a family. According to Leff, each family member will be responsible for their own luggage and if they have more than one bag or go over the weight limit, they are responsible for the fees versus splitting the cost as a group.
Leff said: “American Airlines has changed how customers prepay for checked bags. They’ve stopped pooling checked bags across all travelers on a reservation and now force each bag to be explicitly assigned (and charged) to the passenger who will check it.” Meanwhile, Barack Obama breaks silence on Trump's wild tariff plan with devastating eight-word comment.
He added: “In other words, if someone in the group is checking three bags, they pay first‐bag, second‐bag, and third‐bag fees for themselves rather than splitting everything evenly among the traveling party.”
According to Leff, people may be tempted to spread the bags out with each person volunteering to check an extra bag even if it’s not theirs, but that would go against company policy, that a person must travel on the same flight as their luggage.
He said: I suspect that with this change, some passengers will assign two bags to a single passenger rather than two first bags to each. And that’ll mean more bag fee revenue to American.”
He added: “However, they explain this change as meeting requirements for ‘positive passenger bag match.”
“It means that the passenger and their bag has to travel on the same flight. If a passenger offloads from the aircraft, the baggage has to be removed also.”
American Airlines has also provided an explanation of what to expect on their website, which reads:
"Previously when a customer prepaid their bags online, we optimized the bag charges across all passengers.
"Example: 2 passengers traveling together paying for 2 checked bags were automatically charged 2 first bag fees, assigning one bag to each passengers.
"Now, customers will add bags for each person so bags can be correctly assigned to the owner of the bag, enabling a positive passenger bag match, which is required in many countries for security reasons."