Friday, August 8, 2008

How much fuel does it take to fly a baby from Moscow?

Assuming all goes well at court and the medical reviews on our upcoming trip to Russia, we will have to make another trip shortly thereafter to finalize everything and bring Alina home. The good news is that we scrounged up enough miles to cover our airfare (plus the applicable taxes & fees, etc). So I started checking on how much that next trip will likely cost us, and called the airline's customer service desk.

One thing that we now have to consider is the idea of the "lap child". Well, flying domestically, apparently you don't have to pay for a lap child. However, for an international trip, you have to pay 10% of the base ticket price of an adult ticket. In our case, from Russia back to Dallas, that will be like $75. Not bad, right? Well, that's not all.

The customer service agent said "you will also have to pay for fuel surcharge, and as you know, fuel has gone up a lot in reason years, and the fuel surcharge has gone up like 300%." Well, can't say that I follow the gouging that is the "fuel surcharge", but I do follow regular gas prices (which, for the record. have only gone up like 200% during this same time frame). I'm thinking, okay, that will like double the price maybe. Oh no. It will be an additional $385!

So I start trying to rationalize this out. People can load like 40 lbs or more into a carry on bag and get charged nothing. You can load 50 lbs into the first bag you check and pay like $15 (I think), and yet transporting our little 20 lb. baby, who will be eating only food that we bring with us mind you, will cost nearly $500 all-in? Holy cow! She's not even getting a seat! Will that extra 20 lbs actually burn THAT much more fuel? Crazy.

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