Five airlines made $12.4 billion on seat fees over the last six years

Catch up fast: Executives from five major airlines — American, Delta, United, Frontier, and Spirit — will face questions from senators next week in Washington, the latest in the outgoing Biden administration's war on junk fees.

• Fees like this have become major profit streams for airlines, accounting for bigger slices of their overall revenue mix in recent years.
• So-called ancillary revenue was projected to reach $118 billion worldwide for 2023, according to a report last year from IdeaWorks, an airline consultancy firm.
• That's $15 billion more than in 2022, and $8 billion more than the previous record in 2019.

What they found: Seat-fee revenue is now second only to bag fees, which pulled in $25.3 billion for the same five airlines between 2018 and 2023, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report said.

• One big theme from the report: All five airlines said the price of a given fee is not directly tied to any costs the airline incurs to provide the underlying service.

What's next: The execs will testify at the hearing on December 4.