The airlines that collected over $1,000 in bag fees for every dollar they spent lobbying
In 2013, Spirit spent $0.12 million on federal lobbying while collecting $245 million in baggage and change fees. That is $2,038 in fees for every lobbying dollar, the highest ratio in any airline-year we hold.
Both halves of that sentence come from mandatory federal disclosures. Airlines file their lobbying spend with the Senate under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, and they report their ancillary fee revenue to the Department of Transportation on Form 41. Nobody publishes the two side by side, so we joined them. How we source and check every figure on this site is set out in our editorial guidelines.
Sources: U.S. Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act database; U.S. DOT Form 41 via BTS; analysis by Row30.
What the ratio is, and what it is not
The fee-to-lobbying ratio is two disclosed dollar amounts in the same calendar year, divided. It is not a claim that lobbying produced the fees, and there is no analysis here that could support one. Fee revenue is driven by passenger volume, route mix, fare structure, and how aggressively a carrier unbundles. Lobbying spend is driven by whatever happens to be moving through Congress that year.
What the ratio does capture is a matter of proportion: the amount of money a carrier collects from the parts of a ticket most passengers did not expect to pay for, set against what it spends influencing the rules that govern those charges.
Reported lobbying totals cover all issues a carrier lobbied on, not only aviation. And because the lobbying figure is the denominator and it is small, the ratio is volatile: a carrier that trims a fraction off an already modest government-affairs budget moves its ratio by hundreds of dollars without changing what it charges passengers by a cent. Read these as orders of magnitude, not as precise rankings.
The six airline-years above $1,300
| Airline and year | Fees per lobbying dollar | Lobbying spend | Bag and change fees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit, 2013 | $2,038 | $0.12M | $245M |
| Allegiant, 2019 | $1,895 | $0.16M | $303M |
| Allegiant, 2021 | $1,875 | $0.17M | $319M |
| Allegiant, 2018 | $1,506 | $0.16M | $241M |
| Allegiant, 2023 | $1,345 | $0.35M | $465M |
| Allegiant, 2022 | $1,302 | $0.34M | $443M |
This is not a league table, and it would be misleading to read it as one. The rows span eleven different years. Comparing Spirit in 2013 against Allegiant in 2023 puts two different fare environments, two different fee schedules, and two different lobbying climates in the same column. A carrier's rank here says more about which year it happened to spend least on lobbying than about how it treats passengers.
We are publishing it as a scan rather than a ranking, and stating the universe we scanned: every airline-year in our lobbying-versus-fees dataset from 2013 through 2023, ordered by ratio, with the cutoff set at $1,300 before we looked at which carriers would clear it.
Why Allegiant appears five times
Allegiant is an ultra-low-cost carrier whose business model is built on unbundling: the fare buys the seat and very little else. In 2023 it collected $465 million in baggage and change fees against $0.35 million of federal lobbying. That fee total is not a scandal on its own. It is the model working as designed, and passengers who pack light genuinely pay less than they would on a legacy carrier.
The reason it recurs in this table is arithmetic rather than misconduct: a carrier with large fee revenue and a small government-affairs budget will always produce a large ratio. Larger carriers spend several million dollars a year on lobbying, which pushes their ratios down even when their absolute fee revenue is higher.
What the rules actually say about fees
Federal rules govern how airlines must disclose ancillary fees, not how much they may charge. There is no cap on a checked-bag fee. What the rules do require is that the fee be disclosed before purchase, and there are circumstances in which a checked-bag fee becomes refundable: the Department of Transportation's 2024 rule requires a refund of the checked-bag fee when a bag is significantly delayed.
Almost nobody claims it. We estimate that roughly $19 million in refundable bag fees goes uncollected each year, and the full arithmetic behind that estimate is on our methodology page. If your bag was delayed, the baggage rules explainer covers what the rule provides.
Row30 provides data journalism and education, not legal advice. We are not a law firm and do not represent passengers in legal proceedings. For advice about your own situation, consult an attorney.