Southwest takes in $642m in "other" fees in 2018

Southwest brags about its bags-fly-free policy and lack of ticket change fees, policies that drive passengers to the airline in droves. What the airline doesn't trumpet: It's doing just fine on the fee front thanks to other passenger charges, most notably priority boarding fees. Southwest collected $642m in passenger fees last year, the airline disclosed in a regulatory filing this week, up 13% from $566m in 2017. Airlines have long had to disclose baggage fee and ticket change revenue to the US DoT, but accounting rules now require them to also provide a total figure for passenger fees in regulatory filings instead of lumping them into a broader category called "other" revenue. Southwest is the first to report annual figures. The so-called passenger ancillary revenue category includes a range of fees such as in-flight Wi-Fi and alcoholic beverages, pet fees, unaccompanied minor fees and baggage fees of all sorts, but the the biggest source of fee revenue for Southwest is its 10-year-old EarlyBird Check-In option.<br/>