Most Recent Posts

Hey, baggage fees — happy fifth birthday!

Even if passengers aren't eager to celebrate, airlines are. The fees, born in 2008, helped financially desperate carriers stay aloft as the U.S. economy was spiraling down.

"That was a watershed year that scared the bejeezus out of the airline industry," said Mark Gerchick, an aviation consultant who has just released a book, Full Upright and Locked Position. Even as ticket sales were sliding, jet fuel prices were shooting to historic highs.

"Suddenly, everyone's thinking changed in the industry," he said. Rather than try to provide a single price for comprehensive service, airlines started charging fees — typically $15 per bag — to boost revenues.

Today, fees are not only the norm; they are heading higher still. Checking a bag now costs $25 to $35 on most domestic flights, and roughly three times that amount on many overseas flights. And on any given flight, just about everything comes with a price tag — from 2 more inches of legroom to a can of Coke.

One carrier, Denver-based Frontier Airlines, has announced it soon will begin charging up to $100 for a single carry-on bag for any customer who fails to book through the company's own website.

Having people book directly online eliminates payments to travel agents and "is a big cost saver for us," Frontier spokeswoman Kate O'Malley said. And, of course, it also generates yet another stream of revenues.

Now United Airlines is trying a new approach, offering annual "subscription" fees to allow customers to prepay a year's worth of baggage fees, seat upgrades or airport club access. The plans start at $349 and allow you and your family to check up to two bags per flight.

Related NPR Stories

Author Interviews

Flying High And Low In 'Full Upright And Locked Position'

We've been looking at working conditions in Bangladesh where the collapse in April of a building that housed garment factories killed more than 1,000 people.

But Bangladesh isn't the only country where conditions in garment factories have come under criticism. The same industry has expanded dramatically in Cambodia in recent years, and a report from the U.N.'s International Labor Organization says compliance on key workplace issues needs to be improved. That's a reversal for a country that was once lauded as a model in the developing world.

Here's more: "This report demonstrates that improvements are not being made in many areas including fire safety, child labor, and worker safety and health."

The report noted "impressive improvements" in the 10 years following the signing of the 1999 U.S.-Cambodian trade agreements, but reversals over the past few years.

The Better Factories Cambodia report was released last week, and it notes that "some of this deterioration may be attributed to the rapid growth of the industry."

The report follows the death in May of two workers at a shoe warehouse south of the capital, Phnom Penh.

Like Bangladesh, Cambodia's low labor costs make it an attractive destination for Western retailers. Here's more about the industry from the Wall Street Journal:

"Cambodia exploded onto the global garment scene in the 1990s. Development specialists saw the sector as a major growth opportunity for the country, which had only recently emerged from the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, which according to some estimates left 1.7 million people dead during the late 1970s.

"Taking advantage of cheap labor, factories sprouted up in Phnom Penh residential areas as well as on farmland and rice paddies on the outskirts. There are 462 export factories now, said Ken Loo, secretary-general of the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia. That is up from 185 exporting factories in 2001, he said, citing his earliest records.

"But the rapid growth was accompanied by complaints of sweatshop conditions. As activists called for a solution, U.S. officials negotiated a 1999 trade deal with Cambodia. Washington offered to expand access to the American market — which had quotas on garment imports — if Cambodian firms improved labor standards."

New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner says he did, indeed, trade lewd messages with a woman after his departure from Congress.

Weiner, if you remember, resigned from his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives due to an extramarital sexting scandal and the lies he told to try to cover up what he had done.

Today, TheDirty.com — described by Buzzfeed as a "nightlife site" — revealed a series of explicit messages allegedly sent from Weiner to an unidentified woman in August of 2012. The website also published explicit photographs allegedly sent by Weiner.

After the original scandal, Weiner stayed away from the limelight. But he returned to politics earlier this year, announcing a run for New York City mayor. The announcement was preceded by a media blitz, in which Weiner and his wife Huma Abedin — a long-time aide to Hilary Clinton — appeared to talk frankly about the struggles stemming from the scandal. The New York Times Magazine ran a lengthy feature, the central message of which was that Weiner and his wife had mended fences and Weiner had learned his lesson.

USA Today reports that Weiner's campaign issued a statement saying some of the allegations made by The Dirty were true, that Weiner had continued sexting even after he resigned his seat in June of 2011.

"I said that other texts and photos were likely to come out, and today they have," Weiner said in a statement, according to USA Today. "These things that I did were wrong and hurtful to my wife and caused us to go through challenges in our marriage that extended past my resignation from Congress."

Weiner added:

"While some things that have been posted today are true and some are not, there is no question that what I did was wrong. This behavior is behind me. I've apologized to Huma and am grateful that she has worked through these issues with me and for her forgiveness. I want to again say that I am very sorry to anyone who was on the receiving end of these messages and the disruption that this has caused. As my wife and I have said, we are focused on moving forward."

One day after his two years in limbo ended and he was confirmed by the Senate as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Richard Cordray told NPR that though political bickering held up his nomination he now believes he has bipartisan support for the bureau's work.

"It was a bipartisan vote to confirm me as director — 66 to 34 — and I like to think that reflects the fact that people recognize the work we're doing benefits constituents in every state," Cordray told All Things Considered host Audie Cornish.

Before Cordray could get confirmed, of course, there had to be a "showdown" over filibuster rules that had held up his nomination and those of some others — capped by an extraordinary behind-closed-doors meeting of nearly all 100 senators. And a deal had to be struck that saw President Obama withdraw two nominees for posts on the National Labor Relations Board in order to get Republicans to agree to votes on the nominations of Cordray and a few others.

With all that now behind, Cordray said his bureau is going to focus on exposing "deceptive and misleading marketing" schemes, "debt traps" that such consumers in over their heads financially and on educating consumers so that they aren't "just lambs to slaughter" when it comes to dealing with those looking to manage their investments.

"We're here to stay," he said of the bureau, which was created over the opposition of many Republicans.

We'll add the as-aired interview with Cordray to the top of this post later.