This trend is being sold as inevitable. It deserves more skepticism than it is getting.
Airlines have discovered a profitable new formula, and they are pitching it to investors and consumers alike as simply the natural evolution of air travel: unbundle everything, make the basics worse, and sell the baseline experience back to you piece by piece.
We see it everywhere now. Basic economy seats that don't recline. Carry-on bags that cost extra. Refunds that come with a nudge toward credits instead. Premium cabin amenities that balloon in cost. Even the toddler-turns-two example making headlines reminds us that airlines will nickel-and-dime you in ways that feel almost comically aggressive.
The industry narrative is clear: this is how modern airlines operate. This is competitive. This is what happens when you commoditize air travel. Skepticism gets you nowhere. The market has spoken.
Except the market hasn't quite spoken the way airlines claim it has. What we are witnessing is not inevitable market forces. It is a deliberate strategy designed to look inevitable, and there is a meaningful difference.
When an entire industry adopts similar unbundling strategies within a compressed timeframe, that is not organic consumer preference emerging. That is an industry that has collectively decided to extract more value from a captive customer base. Airlines know you cannot easily choose not to fly. They know you will pay for essentials that used to be included. They know you will rationalize each small fee in isolation rather than aggregate them into the true cost of your trip.
The card benefit inflation that hit American Express's Platinum cardholders illustrates how this game extends beyond the airline itself. A premium product's benefit costs ballooned 50 percent, but those benefits are increasingly things travelers now need to buy separately anyway. The card still feels premium. You still feel like you are getting perks. But you are increasingly paying for things that were once standard.
This is premium shrinkflation. The product looks the same from the outside. The price climbs. But what you actually receive shrinks in real value.
The counterargument is familiar: airlines operate on thin margins, fuel is expensive, competition is fierce. All true. But these facts do not automatically justify every fee or explain why the experience has degraded so sharply.
Consider that some airlines have become quite profitable while maintaining more generous baseline experiences. Aerolíneas Argentinas transformed itself into a profitable operation and is ordering new aircraft. It managed this not by maximizing ancillary fees but by fundamentally rethinking its business model. Different contexts, certainly. But the example suggests that profitable airline operation and decent passenger experience are not inherently contradictory.
The skepticism worth expressing here is not about whether airlines should charge for premium services. They should. It is about the rhetorical sleight of hand that frames aggressive unbundling as inevitable market reality rather than a strategic choice.
When an industry collectively pushes a model that extracts maximum fees from consumers, and then presents that model as inevitable, that warrants scrutiny. Not nostalgia for the old days. Not rejection of the idea that some premium services should cost more. But genuine examination of whether what we are being sold as "the future" is actually serving consumers well, or just serving the bottom line.
Airlines have proven they can be profitable in different ways. That they have largely chosen this particular path says something about their priorities, not about what the travel market necessarily demands.
The next time you see that $30 carry-on fee, or have to choose between a refund and a credit, you might ask: is this really inevitable? Or have I just been told it is, so many times, that I have stopped questioning it?