What's the story with airline charges?

It is fair to say that when Aer Lingus announced it was to charge people up to €15 for pre-booking seats on short-haul flights within Europe earlier this month, it received a fair amount of negative attention.

"What's next?", fumed one correspondent to this paper's letter's page. "Billing per minute for use of the lavatory? Per-second billing to use the reading light? Flat charge for using use the 'call attendant' button?"

While his anger is perfectly understandable, the correspondent might perhaps have been better off keeping schtum and not giving the suits in Dublin airport fresh ideas for generating revenue. Loose talk costs money, especially when airlines seem to be constantly scrabbling round for more so-called extras that they can charge us for.

In the last couple of years, while the base price of most airline tickets out of this country has fallen significantly, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of stealth charges. As well as taxes and airport charges, there are baggage handling fees; more stringent excess baggage charges; transaction fees; boarding fees, seat booking fees and high administration fees for simple transactions - all on top of the savage prices charged for the most miserable of sandwiches.

What is perhaps most galling about all of these newly-minted charges is that every time the airlines invent one, they use increasingly shameless doublespeak to make it look like something we, the flying public, have been clamouring for to "enhance our in-flight experience".

The Labour Party's consumer affairs spokeswoman, Kathleen Lynch, recently described the notion of low fares as "close to becoming a joke" because airlines have become so adept at charging for "almost every conceivable item".

Lynch believes the airline ticket prices have been drained of all transparency and people are being conned into thinking they are getting low-cost flights and being made to pay through the nose for services that should be free.

"If I am going to book a flight, I should be able to look at the price and know straight away what it is going to cost," she told PriceWatch last week. "My experience is that the price of the flights actually trebles when all the extra charges are added."

Lynch accepts that the actual cost of tickets has fallen, but believes that "what is creeping back into the pricing systems is the notion that everything should come at an additional cost".

In particular, she says that the seat booking charges which will see parents having to pay to sit with their children "is absolutely outrageous".

Last week, PriceWatch went in search of flights from Dublin to Barcelona for two people with both Aer Lingus and Ryanair, to see just how much above the initial ticket price we pay when all the extras are factored in.

Ryanair has flights to Girona - admittedly, not actually in Barcelona, but pretty close - departing next Saturday. The return tickets look keenly priced at €79.98 each (€159.96 for two). Taxes, fees and charges going out are €45.48 and for the return leg are €32.84 for two people, taking the total to €238.38.

PriceWatch and its fictitious travelling partner both opt to check in one bag at a cost of €12 each and forget to deselect the default option of €14 each travel insurance (a very easy thing to do, given the way the system is set up), so another €52 is added to our bill, taking the total cost of two return flights from Dublin to Girona to €290.28, a long way from the €159.96 we were initially quoted.

Tickets to Barcelona the following weekend with Aer Lingus cost €240 for two. When taxes and airport charges of €39.79 each are added, as well as a handling fee of €6 each, the total rises to €331.58.

And the charges aren't done yet.

We then have to pay €20 for two pieces of baggage to be left in the hold, taking our final bill to €351.58. It will climb still further to €381.58 if we take full advantage of Aer Lingus's new seat-booking arrangement, a long way from the cheap deal we thought we were getting.

Airlines are not the first business to obscure the true price of their flights with hidden extras. For years, concert tickets were advertised as costing a lot less than the final price because promoters conveniently omitted the Ticketmaster booking fee attached to every ticket. Now all ticket prices quoted must include booking fees, which allows us to see at a glance how much more it costs to see artists perform here when compared with other countries.

Lynch believes that airlines should adopt a similarly upfront system.

"Greater transparency can be added to the cost of airline tickets very easily," she says. "I am not saying airlines can't make a profit. What I am saying is that they should tell people in advance what they are going to charge them."

Change may be just over the horizon as airlines may shortly be forced to display the full price of travel when advertising fares. Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Micheál Martin, has indicated he would introduce new regulations requiring traders to display the inclusive price when advertising. (Presuming, of course, he remains in a position to introduce any regulations at all come the end of May.)

One Irish airline that has resisted the urge to charge for seat allocation and baggage check-in is Aer Arann. It believes that the way its rival airlines advertise their ticket prices is disingenuous. "Some airlines say they are offering savings when they are just creating new revenue streams which the public previously got for free," says Aer Arann's marketing manager, Colin Lewis. "We believe it is better to be upfront with the customers and we believe we can compete without stripping down what we offer and then charging for extras."