There isn’t as much money in cancellations as there is in baggage fees, it seems. So far, close to $2.6 billion has been charged for bags this year (with three quarters measured), and U.S. airlines have only racked up $1.7 billion in cancellation fees. And, as usual, there’s one culprit that consumes around 30 percent of this, with the top five airlines accounting for more than 80 percent of the cancellation fees charged in the United States so far this year, according to the Department of Transportation.
Curious? Well, the list will look pretty familiar to you, largely because the largest airlines are most likely to generate the most revenue from cancellation fees.
Delta wins this fee race, as it did baggage fees, with more than $530 million in cancellation fees, followed by American Airlines ($353 million), United Airlines ($243 million), US Airways ($192 million) and Continental Airlines ($181 million). JetBlue takes a distant sixth with $85 million, and the numbers only get (much) smaller from there.