Air Canada’s Audacious Luggage Math

April 27th, 2008, 10 Comments »

In yesterday’s Globe, I read an article about how Air Canada is now charging passengers $25 to check a second piece of luggage. This, of course, is the latest in a long series of indignities that travellers have had to suffer at the hands of the struggling airline.

I was amused by a sidebar accompanying the article (you can see it at the bottom of the online version) which discussed fees for various ‘premium’ services on Air Canada. Here’s what some of those numbers look like for a North American flight:

Check more than two bags: $100
Check two bags: $25
Check one bag: $0
Check zero bags: You save, get this, $3.

How baldfaced is that? Air Canada cites “record high and unrelenting fuel costs” for the new fee. If the price of fuel is driving this pricing, then shouldn’t one less bag be worth as much to the consumer as one more bag costs the airline?

And the third bag is even more ridiculous. I’d bet that processing subsequent bags doesn’t cost as much as the first. After all, the clerk is already processing one. The third bag shouldn’t cost three times the second, it should cost less than the second.

There’s also a $100 fee for overweight bags (from 23 to 32 kg). I should mention that 23 kg is a lot of bag. When we left to live abroad for a year, my huge backpack only weighed 17 kg.

I know the fees are aimed at discouraging travellers from bringing a lot of luggage, but that pricing seems hilariously audacious.

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Stanford Eliminates Tuition For 85% Of American Students

February 20th, 2008, 13 Comments »

This is surprising and encouraging news. Stanford University has done away with tuition for any student whose family makes less than US $100,000 a year. According to Wikipedia, that’s about 85% of all American households. From the article:

The university is making the change in the wake of published reports last month that its endowment had grown almost 22 percent last year, to $17.1 billion. That sum had begun to attract attention from lawmakers who want wealthy institutions to do more to reduce tuition costs.

$17 billion. Wow. The American college system is different from Canada’s in this respect. Giving to your alma mater seems far more common south of the border. Is that accurate, do you think?

Stanford is also getting rid of room and board costs for students whose families earn less than US $60,000. This seems like a fantastic, radical move, considering a year’s tuition is currently about US $35,000 a year. Incidentally, that figure still buys you tuition and room and board for four years at Canada’s top comprehensive university (PDF).

I expect this will make the application process more meritocratic, and seriously reduce the crippling debt that so many students graduate with. Hopefully other American schools will follow suit.

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