A checked bag on Delta Air Lines will cost you $40 starting this summer. That’s up from $35, a seemingly modest $5 increase that masks a far more aggressive repricing of air travel in America. Delta isn’t alone. United Airlines, JetBlue Airways, and others have all raised their checked bag fees in recent months, and the trajectory suggests this is just the beginning of a broader campaign to extract more revenue from passengers who once took these services for granted.
The fee hikes are landing at a moment of considerable turbulence for the airline industry — not in the skies, but in the spreadsheets. Carriers are grappling with rising labor costs, expensive new aircraft deliveries, volatile fuel prices, and a consumer environment clouded by tariff uncertainty. Ancillary revenue, the industry term for all the money airlines collect beyond the base ticket price, has become the pressure valve. And bag fees are the easiest knob to turn.
Business Insider reported that Delta will increase its first checked bag fee to $40 for Main Cabin passengers on domestic flights starting July 9, 2025. The second bag jumps to $55, up from $50. United Airlines already moved first, raising its first checked bag fee to $40 back in February for tickets purchased on or after that date. JetBlue, which once positioned itself as the friendlier alternative to legacy carriers, raised its first checked bag fee to $40 in October 2024. American Airlines nudged its fee to $40 in February as well.
So all four major carriers now charge the same price for a first checked bag on basic domestic itineraries. That kind of uniformity doesn’t happen by accident.
The history here matters. When airlines first introduced checked bag fees in 2008, the charge was $15. That was during the financial crisis, and carriers framed it as a temporary survival measure. It wasn’t temporary. The fee crept to $25, then $30, then $35. Now $40. Adjusted for inflation, a $15 fee in 2008 would be roughly $22 today, meaning the actual price of checking a bag has nearly doubled in real terms. Airlines have been raising fees faster than the cost of living — and faster than their own costs in many cases.
The Department of Transportation under the Biden administration attempted to push airlines toward greater fee transparency, proposing rules that would require carriers to display all-in pricing including bag fees at the point of ticket purchase. The airline industry lobbied aggressively against those measures. Under the current Trump administration, the regulatory posture has shifted, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy signaling a lighter touch on airline consumer protection enforcement. That has given carriers more room to maneuver on pricing.
Delta’s announcement came during a period when the airline had already trimmed its full-year profit forecast due to macroeconomic uncertainty tied to tariffs. CEO Ed Bastian told analysts in April that the demand environment was “impossible to forecast” given trade policy volatility. Against that backdrop, bag fee increases offer something rare: predictable, high-margin revenue that doesn’t depend on filling more seats or raising base fares in a competitive market.
The math is staggering. Airlines for America, the industry trade group, estimated that U.S. carriers collected $7.1 billion in baggage fee revenue in 2023 alone. That figure has almost certainly grown in 2024 and will grow again in 2025 as the new $40 standard takes hold across the industry. For Delta specifically, ancillary revenue including bag fees, seat upgrades, and premium product sales accounted for a significant and growing share of total revenue in recent quarters.
Not every airline is playing the same game. Southwest Airlines still doesn’t charge for the first two checked bags, a policy it has defended as a core brand differentiator. But even Southwest has been under pressure from activist investors and Wall Street analysts to reconsider. Elliott Investment Management, which took a stake in Southwest in 2024, pushed for operational changes that could eventually put the free-bags policy on the table. Southwest’s leadership has so far held firm, but the financial temptation is enormous. If Southwest charged $40 per first bag, it could generate billions in new annual revenue overnight.
For consumers, the fee increases compound a broader trend of unbundling that has made the base ticket price increasingly meaningless as an indicator of total travel cost. A family of four checking bags on a round-trip domestic flight now pays $320 in bag fees alone at the $40 rate — before anyone has boarded the plane. That’s a material portion of the total trip cost for many leisure travelers, and it creates perverse incentives. Passengers stuff oversized carry-ons into overhead bins, slowing boarding times and creating conflict in the cabin. Airlines then sell “priority boarding” to guarantee overhead bin space, monetizing a problem they created.
The cycle is self-reinforcing.
Credit card co-brand deals offer some relief. Delta’s American Express cards, United’s Chase cards, and JetBlue’s Barclays cards all waive checked bag fees for cardholders. But that benefit comes with annual fees ranging from $99 to $550, and the economics only work for frequent travelers. The casual flier — someone taking two or three trips a year — is absorbing the full cost. And that’s exactly the customer segment with the least leverage to push back.
Industry analysts have noted that bag fee increases also serve a strategic purpose beyond pure revenue generation. They push price-sensitive customers toward basic economy fares, which carry more restrictions and lower costs for the airline to service. Meanwhile, higher-spending customers are nudged toward premium economy or business class products where bag fees are waived and margins are fatter. It’s a sorting mechanism disguised as a service charge.
Recent reporting from CNBC highlighted that Delta’s fee increase aligns with a broader strategy to push customers toward its premium products, including Delta One and Delta Premium Select, where checked bags are included. The airline has been investing heavily in premium cabin retrofits across its fleet, betting that the future of profitable flying is selling fewer seats at higher prices rather than more seats at lower ones.
United has made a similar bet. CEO Scott Kirby has spoken repeatedly about the airline’s strategy to grow premium revenue faster than economy revenue. The bag fee increase fits neatly into that framework — it makes economy travel slightly more painful, creating a stronger incentive to trade up.
JetBlue’s situation is different and arguably more precarious. The carrier abandoned its merger attempt with Spirit Airlines after a federal judge blocked the deal in 2024, and it has been restructuring its route network and cost base ever since. Bag fee revenue is a lifeline for JetBlue as it tries to stabilize margins while competing against both legacy carriers and ultra-low-cost competitors. The airline’s decision to raise fees to $40 last October was an early signal that the industry was moving in lockstep.
There’s a political dimension too. Congressional Democrats have periodically introduced legislation to cap or regulate airline ancillary fees, but none of these bills have gained traction. The current Congress, with Republican majorities in both chambers, is unlikely to pursue airline fee regulation. That gives carriers a clear runway — perhaps several years — to continue pushing fees higher without legislative interference.
Where does it end? Probably not at $40. If history is any guide, the next round of increases will come within 12 to 18 months, likely pushing first checked bag fees to $45 or $50. The airlines will cite rising costs. They’ll point to investments in customer experience. They’ll note that base fares remain competitive. All of which will be true, and all of which will obscure the fundamental reality: the price of flying is going up, and it’s going up in ways designed to be as opaque as possible.
The $5 increase is small enough that most travelers won’t change their behavior. That’s the point. Airlines have spent two decades perfecting the art of incremental fee increases — small enough to avoid outrage, frequent enough to compound into serious money. A $5 hike across millions of checked bags per quarter adds up to hundreds of millions in annual revenue. It’s one of the most efficient profit-generating mechanisms in American business.
And the bags keep getting checked.
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