Bill Nelson: “we are just about to enter the holiday season. The traffic is already picking up. We could call it the great holiday…”

“we are just about to enter the holiday season. The traffic is already picking up. We could call it the great holiday migration that is going to be underway. Millions of people will be traveling to see their loved ones--their families, their friends-- and they will be visiting by airplane. They are going to get a big surprise when they head to the airline ticket counter or try to check in online and face a blizzard of what the airlines call ancillary fees. For years, many of us on the Commerce Committee have been pushing the Department of Transportation to adopt rules that would require a standardized disclosure statement for common airline fees, such as bag fees, change and cancellation fees, and priority boarding and seating fees. Comparing this to when one applies for a credit card, there is a box on the back of the application that shows the annual fee of the credit card, the interest rate, and any other fees. Consumers have this so they can compare adequate data to adequate data. We like to call it comparing apples to apples. Therefore, the consumer can know what it is they are looking for and choose the credit card they want. So it is a commonsense solution in the airline business that you would want to do for consumers, to make sense of all those different fees on an airline ticket.…”