The Travel Detective may be grateful for many things, but he’s sure not happy about Spirit Airways and airlines’ ancillary fee program.

I’m angry.

Its one thing for airlines to say they’re making money on ancillary fees, but its getting out of control. Airlines are making billions of dollars in checked bags fees, ticket change fees, pillow and blanket charges, and food. However, the airline lobby is trying to tell me that when you actually analyze airline ticket fares, the ticket costs 20 percent today less than it did 15 years ago.

Well, the official ticket cost is less, especially when you consider the airlines that some airlines charge $9 a ticket. But by the time you finish paying for the ticket its $400. Your officially published ticket prices are lower than they were 15 years ago, but not when you consider ancillary fees. And airlines are making more money with ancillary fees than they’re making operating the airline.

There’s something wrong with that. For something really wrong, lets talk about our friends at Spirit Airlines. I like to say that Spirit should change their advertising motto to “We’re not happy until you’re not happy.”

Spirit has one of the sneakiest fees in the industry that goes against common sense. Most airlines want you to book online, but not Spirit. Spirit will charge you up to $34 in fees if you want to buy your tickets online. If you want to avoid that, you need to go to the airport and stand on line at the counter. When you actually do the math, their booking fee could be 40 percent more than the ticket’s total price. So sure ticket prices are less than they were 15 years ago because we are now adding everything on after the fact.

Let’s break down a Spirit ticket. Say the advertised fare from Spirit is $14 each way between Detroit and New York. Guess what happens after that? You spend $21 in federal taxes and security fees, and then pay a $33.98 usage fee for booking on line. And this is before you pay to check or carry on a bag.

Most fees are optional. You don’t have to eat the food (why would you?), you don’t have to have the pillow, you don’t have to have the blanket, you don’t have to have a preferential seat, you don’t have to board early. But, you do have to check or carry on a bag.

With most airlines, a smart traveler knows that you can sneak your bag through security and just check it at the gate when they have no more room left on the plane. So, everybody is now going through those security checkpoints with everything short of their dead grandmother and a stuffed moose and getting it on the plane.

This baggage policy is not just incovenient, but it creates huge delays. First there’s a delay at security checkpoints because the TSA doesn’t have enough people to look inside every bag that goes though and because these bags are usually jammed with stuff. Then, planes are taking off later and later since they have to gate-check hundreds of bags. The airlines have created this mess and they’re making tons of money from it.

Have you been gouged by airline fees? Sound off to the Travel Detective in the comments.

For more, madness check out:

• To navigate fees and crowds, consider our Thanksgiving Travel Survival Guide
• our report on Airlines Make $1.5 Billion from Airlines in Extra Fee Charges
• Peter’s interview on the Preferred Seat Hoax: Airline Charge More to Book the Same Seats
• The Travel Detective’s blog archives‘

By Peter Greenberg for Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio