contributed by Executive Travel (executivetravel.com)
For the Week of: December 18, 2017

Here is how a $116 flight on Allegiant Airlines turns into $571 –

Buyer Beware! The low cost airlines such as Allegiant, Frontier and Spirit do a great job of promoting low prices. What the airlines don’t want you to know is that in many cases you will actually pay hundreds of dollars more for your tickets when you arrive at the airport with all their “hidden fees”. I recently went to the Allegiant web site and found an amazing price flying from Grand Island, Nebraska to Las Vegas for $116 round trip. I decided to figure out the total cost if I wanted to do what many people do and take my golf clubs for a few rounds of golf to Glitter Gulch My plan was to take my golf clubs, one suit case, one carry-on and get seat assignments along with a boarding pass by calling the Allegiant toll-free phone number. I hope you are sitting down. List below are all the extra costs.

•  Roundtrip airfares – $116
•  Seat selection fee – $80
•  Call center booking fee – $15
•  Boarding pass printing fee – $10 ($5 one way X 2)
•  Carry-on luggage fee – $100 ($50 one way X 2)
•  Checked luggage fee – $100 ($50 one way x 2)
•  Oversized luggage (golf clubs) – $150 ($75 one way X 2)
•  Total cost of airline ticket – $571

So it turns out taking the “low cost” airline is not such a great deal after all. As the late-great Paul Harvey used to say, “Now you know the rest of the story”.