Petition: Surfers Against Discriminatory Airline Surfboard Fees
PRESS RELEASE
Surfers are some of the most travelled people in the world. Pioneering and exploring remote parts of the world to find that beautiful gem of a wave. These airlines would not even be making money from a lot of prime destinations if it hadn’t been for surfers, places like Bali, Costa Rica, Central America, The Maldives, Sri Lanka and many remote destinations in Indonesia just for starters.
What is shameful & discriminatory is that most airlines have imposed fees for the handling of a surfboard. Some airlines have banned surfboards altogether! And they do this while other sporting equipment travel for free.
Sign the petition here:
I think this is ridiculous. Airlines are private organizations, and they have no obligation to anyone but their shareholders; they certainly have no obligation to haul someone’s surfboard around for free.
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Which airlines are imposing these fees and bans? They do have the power to choose what they’ll haul and I have the power to select who will haul my ass and future surfboard with me. How much do they charge for carting around golf clubs? What criteria do they use? Is there a chart?
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Okay, if I had checked out the petition link you provided I would have answered my own questions from above. I just signed the petition. Thank you!
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You’re right, Matt — airlines should not be compelled, but then a petition is not an order; it’s simply an expression of the popular will.
And I’ve been among the outraged about this…We paid several hundred dollars to get our surfboards to the North Shore earlier this year, but most of those charges came while we were the Honolulu airport heading home, and despite the airlines assurances that we would not be double-charged or fobbed to some other subcontracted airline (which is where the money grab really kicks in).
The trouble is that as airlines struggle to stay in business, the ones that remain have virtual monopolies in many markets — some smaller burgs lose carriers outright! Moreover, many airlines are beginning to apply the same desperate extra-pricing policies to all luggage that they originally developed for surfboards and other can’t-leave-behind items.
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matt you’re a fucking idiot.
did you just graduate jr. college?
you are right. the airlines fiduciary responsibility is to their shareholders.
although the airlines responsibility does not start and end with their shareholders. it includes their customers, among others. and when they employ policies which discourage airline travel to a significant segment of their market, they are not living up to their fiduciary responsibilities.
and as for a “private organization,” they sure receive plenty of government subsidy (ie my tax tax dollars).
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Evan – When I got out of college, I stopped beginning otherwise reasonable responses with, ‘You’re a fucking idiot.’
….I thought continuing this habit might undermine my arguments and give my interlocutor(s) the impression I hadn’t yet graduated from junior college.
Let’s keep it clean here, kids!
(Thanks to Jeff Atwood, whose podcast I am listening to these days, for the adulterated image)
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