Why baggage fees are a good thing

Fewer passengers are checking in their items, which means that the airlines have not been losing as many bags. From the NYT:

A baggage report released last month from SITA, an aviation information technology company that studies trends in passenger baggage, found that one in four passengers chose not to check bags last year, compared with one in six in 2008 -- the first year virtually all the major airlines imposed the fees. The decrease in the number of bags checked last year, which the report also attributed to a drop in the number of people flying, resulted in a 24 percent decrease in the number of bags mishandled worldwide -- both damaged and lost. That, in turn, saved the United States airline industry $94 million, according to SITA's figures.

Stat of the day:
Airline revenue from baggage fees in 2007: $464 million
Airline revenue from baggage fees for the first 9 months of 2009: Almost $2 billion