How To Avoid Airline Fees

If there’s one gripe that most people share about air travel today, it’s the fees. Bag fees. Seat fees. Change fees. There’s no surer way to turn what was a cheap flight into an expensive one than getting hit with a boatload of fees.

But for each one, there’s a way around it. Here we’ll go over the three most common fees and different ways to circumvent them.

Bag fees

In 2024, $35 became the new standard price for checked bags—$70 per person roundtrip. Here are some ways around the fee.

• Airline credit card: This is the simplest solution. Almost every airline credit card offers a free checked bag as one of its perks. Bonus: It usually applies to your entire party. If your family of four each wants to check a bag, your American Airlines credit card will save you $280 on one roundtrip. 
• Car seat bag: Most airlines have a “car seats fly free” policy even on basic economy tickets. You can buy a car seat bag that has plenty of extra room, including enough space for another bag where the child would sit.
• Gate-check loophole: If you check your bag when you arrive at the airport, you'll pay $35 each way for domestic flights. Or you could walk that bag five minutes through security to your gate. On nearly every flight I've taken over the past few years, the gate agent has asked for volunteers to check their bags to their final destination—free of charge. Sometimes they'll even throw in priority boarding or a free onboard drink.

Seat fees

Seat selection fees are the toughest to circumvent. Airline credit cards don’t give free seat selection.

• Avoid basic economy: On most airlines, basic economy ticket holders get assigned seats and can’t change. Paying a bit extra to avoid basic economy gives you a handful of perks, including seat selection.
• Family seating: Under pressure from the Biden Administration, a growing number of airlines now seat families together without an extra fee, even with basic economy tickets. Here’s the dashboard for which airlines are best for family seating.
• Negotiate when you get bumped: If you get bumped from a flight, there’s a secret menu of things you can negotiate in addition to future travel credit. My favorite is asking for a business class (or at least premium economy) seat on my replacement flight. You won’t always get it, but if the airline is desperate for volunteers, your odds are good.

Flight change fees

Pre-pandemic, if you wanted to change the dates of a flight you’d booked, it would cost anywhere from $100–$750 to do so, in addition to any fare difference. Absolutely vile.

But beginning in late 2020, US airlines across the board announced they were getting rid of change fees on all bookings aside from basic economy. (Even budget airlines like Spirit and Frontier have jumped on the bandwagon.)

The easiest way to avoid change fees is simple: Avoid basic economy.

A few more points to remember:

• Free changes ≠ free refunds. You can change your travel dates without a penalty, and you can cancel for full travel credit—but you can’t cancel and get a refund.
• While there’s no change penalty, if your new flight is more expensive, you’re still responsible for the difference.
• The good news: If your new flight is cheaper, you’ll get the difference back in the form of a travel voucher.

The bottom line

Not every fee on every flight can be avoided. But most of the time, a bit of knowledge and preparation can help save you hundreds of dollars on avoidable fees.