As usual, it has been a crazy week in the airline business.

If you watched the Today show earlier this week you saw me talking about all the nickel and diming that is going on now—every airline is trying to charge you for everything short of breathing and there are some charges out there that you need to know about.

You may already have heard me talk about the $25 charge for your second checked bag. I laugh about that because the airlines used to lose my bags for free. I mean why would I want to spend $25 for them to lose it?

But moving on from that it is getting even more insidious. United Airlines is the biggest culprit here. They just raised their fee for changing one of your discounted tickets from $100 to $150. That’s more than what the ticket usually costs! There is no labor there. So, who are they kidding? They’re just trying to generate revenue.

BACK-TO-BACK TICKETING

But you want to get me really angry? Remember the movie Saturday Night Fever? Well, the airlines have caught it again. They’re re-instituting that dreaded Saturday night stay requirement on discounted tickets.

Many of you remember those “good old days” with that dreaded requirement. It meant that for a discounted ticket going anywhere, no matter how far in advance you reserve the flight, you had to stay over a Saturday. It’s meant to hose business travelers.

I was the guy, among other people, who fought that and came up with the idea of the back-to-back ticket. The airlines didn’t like that—in fact, they marched on NBC and tried to get me fired for participating in fraudulent, criminal behavior. And you know what? There is no fraudulent, criminal behavior.

Let me tell you how it works …

If you wanted to make a reservation, let’s say two weeks from Monday to go from New York to San Francisco, but you needed to return on a Thursday, four days later, you won’t get a discounted ticket because you didn’t stay over Saturday night. And that would mean a ticket fare of about $1,200 in coach.

But if you stayed over the Saturday night, it could be as low as $298.

So, here’s how we’re going to beat the airlines at their own game by playing by their own rules: You make a reservation two weeks from Monday going from New York to San Francisco, coming back three weeks later, that is $298. That is reservation one.

Reservation two is that you make a reservation two weeks from Thursday, flying from San Francisco to New York coming back two weeks later and that is $298. So, less than half for what they wanted to charge you for one round-trip ticket you get two tickets. If you plan it properly, you get to fly all four segments and get double the miles!

When the airlines when nuts about that, I basically ask this question:

If I go out today and buy a six-pack of Coca-Cola and I only drink three of the sodas, does the Coca-Cola police come and throw me in Coca-Cola prison? They do not. It is my choice. I am flying on the dates and times specified on the ticket, on a ticket I bought myself under my own name. So, if anything the airlines are guilty of breach of contract if they throw me off the plane for flying on a back-to-back ticket.

Why don’t the airlines just be fair about this and disclose it? I am a big fan of full disclosure. We know what fuels cost and we know the airlines have a very big problem, in trying to even break even. Okay, we acknowledge it.

Just tell me what the airfare is, don’t charge me $5 for breathing. Don’t put on pay toilets. Just tell me what it is going to cost.

THE DREADED ASTERISK

The same things happen in the way they structure their fares. An airline will advertise a fare just to be competitive and then there is the dreaded asterisk. And that dreaded asterisk means that you got to scroll to the end of the page to find out that the $400 fare has a $450 surcharge.

We just found an example of that on a Web site that we talked about on the Today show last week. A fare from New York to London was advertised as $400* and you find 25 paragraphs of small print later it carried a $450 surcharge so the ticket was really $850.

We’re not stupid. Just tell us what it is going to cost us. Once again, we know that airfare is going to go up, but stop nickel and diming us. Because otherwise guys like me will continue to go on the air and tell people how to get around stuff like that because it is insidious.

Another example: Los Angeles to New York is $184*.

The asterisk meaning that it’s a one-way fare requiring a round-trip purchase. That’s $368, not $184! It’s really pissing me off.

Bottom line is we need to be much better consumers because the airlines, in their struggle to stay above water, (OK, above the runway) are looking to generate revenue any way they can.

The Saturday night stay restriction—we had a huge backlash when they tried in the ’90s. I know because I led the fight against it.

And you know what ended it? When airlines like JetBlue and Southwest started selling one-way tickets. It is going to happen again.

SUMMER TRAVEL … GETTING WORSE BEFORE IT GETS BETTER

Now having said all that, you know it is going to get worse this summer before it gets better. It is going to get worse because the airlines have shrunk their domestic capacity—they make very little money on leisure markets like Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Las Vegas, and Hawaii.

So they’re pulling a lot of planes off that market and moving them overseas. Why overseas? Because the dollar is getting so beaten up that the U.S. is a bargain.

So, you are going to be on a plane this year that is going to be totally crowded and you are going to be sitting next to people that don’t speak English because it is a bargain for them. We are pricing ourselves out of our own market.

Hotels in New York are $600 a night—not because we don’t want to spend the money, but because foreigners don’t even blink about spending that money. Their market not only will bear that, it will totally handle that and more.

The other night, I had to fly from Los Angeles to Miami on a non-stop flight and you know what the equipment was? A 737 non-stop from L.A. to Miami because they pulled the big planes off to go to Europe.

Now that is all going to be fine … until when? Until September, when guess what? Nobody is going to be flying anywhere and that is when you are going to see real trouble in the airline business.

You thought you saw trouble already this year with so many bankruptcies? Well, get ready stand in line, buy the ticket and watch the show because it is not going to be pretty. I am sorry to be the doom-and-gloom guy, but you know what? It doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. I just told you how to get around the Saturday night stay restriction. So, say thank you.

Anyway, watch the Today show Tuesday and Wednesday. We will be doing a two-part special on airline safety and air maintenance. Are the skies safe? Are the planes safe?

I ran around the country talking to everybody from the National Transportation Safety Board to the FAA. It’s the system that is getting frayed and it is not pretty. Remember, we are dealing with a downward economy, a spiraling problem with aging aircraft and outsourcing and maintenance. That is the makings of a perfect storm.

From Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio — Listen Here.

Check out Peter’s segments from the Today show.