Airlines Are Making a Mint on Your Checked Bags

As Southwest Airlines -- one of the last holdouts -- finally joins the masses and starts charging passengers for checked bags, CBS News looks at the eye-popping amount of money such charges bring in for airlines. Last year, revenue from checked bags totaled around $7.27 billion for Alaska Airlines, Allegiant Air, American, Breeze Airways, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue, Silver Airways, Southwest (which has long charged for any checked bags beyond two per customer), Spirit Airlines, Sun Country, and United Airlines, according to government data. That's up from $7.07 billion the year prior, $6.7 billion in 2022, and $5.3 billion in 2021. (Southwest's new charges apply to any flights booked from Wednesday forward.)