Airline fees getting out of hand?

I have been sitting here looking over the past few days worth of news in the travel industry and I have to ask, am I the only one that is made think of a teenager with acne when I think about the airlines? They seem to be scrabbling about searching for anything that will work for their problem, and not really thinking about the long term effects of those efforts just so long as they can have things looking nice for their date that night.

Charges for second checked bags have gone up across the board, there is a $2 fee to get a drink of water, I was told today about a case where it cost $75 for a parent to pick up their kids who were flying alone. Why in the heck is there a $75 fee for someone to walk out to the terminal and pick up their child? It does not make any sense to me.

I think the airlines are just scrabbling for whatever fees they can manage to tack onto things to help them break even, and not really thinking about what those fees are before they dive headlong ahead with them. I guess I was a pioneer in the forward thinking when I came back from Georgia a few years ago. I emptied out my water bottle and took it through the security line empty, then refilled it on the other end. Of course, this was not because they would charge me for water on the plane, although that $5 a bottle in the terminal hurt when I had flown down to Georgia. I just liked that bottle and it was sort of a souvenir of our visit to the Georgia Aquarium. Now I see that other blogs are suggesting that trick for their readers in the wake of the charges for water on airlines.

Something else I do is keep a set of airline headphones in my travel bag. I paid $2 for them years ago, nice comfortable ones that have the fold down jack so they can be used with dual or single jack outlets. Now every time I fly I take along my own folding headphones that fit easily into my pocket so if I want to watch the in-flight movie I don't have to buy headphones for between $2 and $5.