How budget Australian airline is slugging passengers more for baggage on short flights

Jetstar is raking in a fortune from travellers in baggage fees, with the budget airline admitting it often charges more for a shorter flight than a longer one. 

Flights do not come with check-in baggage as standard, and customers are given the option to upgrade their ticket with a ‘bundle’ after choosing a flight, with individual baggage upgrades available in a secondary window. 

A ‘flex’ bundle, the cheapest option, is often at least $40 and includes an extra 3kg of carry-on luggage, the ability to choose a seat, no charge for changing your flight – provided you leave on the same day – and a credit voucher if you need to cancel. 

But clicking to the next page of options, adding the extra 3kg can be less than $15, and for a further $20, travellers can add 20kg of check-in luggage.  

These prices fluctuate depending on where you are flying, and further research shows shorter flights are likely to attract larger fees than longer ones.  

Adding 15 kilograms of luggage to a flight from Brisbane to Cairns, for instance, will attract a fee of $26, while adding the same amount of baggage to a flight from Sydney to Cairns will cost only $18. 

Carry-on luggage is the same. Including the three-kilogram add-on to the flight from Brisbane costs $21, while it’s only $15 to add more weight to the same flight from Sydney.  

In the last six months, about 300,000 Jetstar passengers had coughed up nearly $50 to join ‘Club Jetstar’, which entitles them to 20 per cent off the cost of adding baggage and choosing a seat. 

Adding baggage to a flight from Sydney to Cairns costs significantly less than adding the same amount on a flight from Brisbane 

Brisbane is about 800 kilometres closer to Cairns than Sydney, and the flight is about an hour shorter

The 2019 Half Year Results published in February by Qantas, Jetstar’s parent company, claimed the company had an 11 per cent rise in ‘ancillary revenue’, which was ‘driven by the successful launch of “Plus 3kg” carry on’.  

A spokesman for Jetstar told Daily Mail Australia 300,000 people had added the extra carry-on luggage to their ticket in the past six months. 

They said the airline takes ‘a number of factors into consideration’ when deciding the prices of add-on luggage and bundles. 

‘These include the length of the route, destination, demand for that product on the route, as well as the competitive environment,’ the spokesman said.  

Jetstar’s extra carry-on baggage option was credited for a significant increase in Qantas’ ‘ancillary revenue’