Different Fares Are in Play When Babies Fly Abroad

A friend of mine who has five children once observed, “My kids love me for what I have done for them lately.”

The nation’s airlines might say much the same thing about their customers.

Statistics released by the Air Transport Assn. show that in real-dollar terms--that is, when you discount inflation’s impact--average air fares are only 28% of what they were in 1950, while 25 times more people are flying U.S. carriers. So prices have fallen while patronage has vastly increased.

Yet it’s obvious to anyone who listens to conversation about airline travel these days that there are strong feelings that service on the planes--the food, seat space and so forth--have deteriorated. Gripes about all these things are common.

And, it goes without saying, present-day travelers are very price-conscious.

Recently, I was contacted by an Orange County resident, Sarah Pickell, who had a very precise complaint about United Airlines. It concerned a Los Angeles-Hong Kong round trip she made in business class with her year-old son, Derek, in April.

Pickell was traveling for business reasons on a corporate discount ticket, but she wanted to take her baby along so her mother, who lives in the Far East, could meet her grandson for the first time.

Initially, Pickell thought her son would travel on her lap for free. She believed that the domestic air standard, under which children below 2 travel for free as long as they do not occupy a separate seat, would apply to the Hong Kong trip as well.

It came as an unpleasant surprise when United told Pickell that she would have to pay a 10% fare for her

child in accordance with rules governing international flights.

But it came as an even worse surprise when she got to LAX and found that she was being billed 10% of the full fare rather than 10% of the discount fare obtained by her corporation, which she asked me not to name.

She said she asked repeatedly what the 10% was for and was vaguely told that it was for “documentation fees.”

“When I finally gave in to paying, they did not charge me 10% of the $2,807.85 [discount price]. They charged me 10% of the full fare amount [of $5,074],” Pickell said. “The only explanation I got was that it was the rule.

“I ended up paying $507.40 to have my 1-year-old old sit, more like squirm, on my lap for 14 hours in flight instead of the $281 I expected to pay. It was very expensive misery.”

And besides, Pickell said, United didn’t even serve the toddler’s meal she had ordered for her baby, either going or coming.

“The whole pricing structure baffles me, because 10% of an economy class seat would’ve been $70 to $90 versus $300 to $750 for business/first class,” she added. “That is a big difference for documentation fees. There wasn’t any difference in service to my child sitting in business class. My child did not get any meals or any extra ‘gifts’ for sitting in business class.”

Had Pickell decided to purchase a separate seat for her son, she would have paid the children’s fare of 75% of the full business fare, or $3,805.50.

United explained that such corporate discount agreements as Pickell’s do not allow a second person who is not flying for business reasons to use the discount.

How convenient for the airline from a financial point of view, if not the parents of infants. (Or, maybe, employers aren’t anxious for mothers to take babies or husbands with them on business trips.)

United was happy to respond to Pickell’s complaint. And with the exception of a suggestion that it might give her some vouchers because her baby had not received the toddler’s meals, it defended itself in no uncertain terms.

“The bottom line is: We are a business,” said United spokesman Andy Plews, adding that the different international rules on infant fares have applied for half a century.

“There is a distinction we draw between domestic flying and international flights,” he said. “Domestically, there are shorter flights, and we absorb whatever cost there is for infants.”

As for Pickell’s suggestion that there wasn’t all that much difference in the service little Derek got in business class from what he would have received in coach, Plews took exception.

“In business class, there is more lavatory access, there’s a greater ratio of crew available to assist, which I know from personal experience can be handy when you’ve got a baby,” he said.

“It’s a premium product, and it’s generally a quieter cabin. You’ve got people working in there. And obviously the space in front of each seat is more, so it’s more comfortable to carry a baby.”

I asked whether the discrepancy of several hundred dollars in the amount charged to carry a baby on Pickell’s lap in business class as compared to coach might not have something to do with the airline’s desire to keep possibly noisy and disruptive babies from proximity to their better-paying passengers.

“We do get complaints occasionally from people who bought business class fares about squalling babies,” Plews allowed. “If it’s free and everybody brings a baby, that would not be good in terms of the overall product.”

When I told Pickell of that remark, she suggested that this was a discriminatory policy by United.

But Plews said the next time I talked to him that United has no “policy” of discouraging customers with babies from flying in the upper classes.

Pickell also viewed the airline’s argument that service was so much better for carrying a baby in business class as “bogus.”

“My child doesn’t get any of that service, and my child is paying for it,” she maintained.

United’s only competition at LAX for nonstop flights to Hong Kong is Cathay Pacific. Checks with that carrier showed that its infant fare policy is pretty much the same as United’s.

Ken Reich can be contacted with your accounts of true consumer adventure at (213) 237-7060 or by e-mail at ken.reich@latimes.com.