'Re-banking' miles costly

The airlines will gladly escort your unaccompanied child from one city to another, I have learned, as long as no actual escorting is involved.

They will charge you $100 for the privilege, each way, and if you should cancel the reservation you made with frequent flier points, they will charge you $100 for that.

On the plus side, when I bailed out on a round-trip for my 14-year-old this month, Northwest Airlines cheerfully refunded the $200 it had charged in advance for not accompanying him.

Northwest, I should point out, has given me little reason to complain over the years and is no particular villain here. The other airlines I checked assess roughly the same fees for roughly the same things.

According to a very nice Delta Airlines spokesman named Paul Skrbec, that's what's known as an "industry standard," which is to say, somebody got away with it once so now they all do it.

What instigated all of this was the insistence of Son B that he wanted to go to gymnastics camp in eastern Pennsylvania instead of sitting around all summer in front of the television like any other self-respecting kid.

Because he's not yet 15, I was told, I would have to shell out an extra $100 in both directions to get him to and from Allentown. The kicker was that he could only take direct flights.

In other words, I would walk him to the gate at Metro Airport, the camp would walk him from the gate on the other end, and Northwest would collect $100 for watching us do it. But if I wanted to put him on a flight that connected in Philadelphia -- if actual accompanying was involved, from gate A40 to gate A34 -- the airlines wanted no part of it.

Ultimately, we canceled the reservation in favor of other flights with earlier arrivals. That's when I was assessed $100 for what the reservations agent called "re-banking your miles."

100 bucks for 10 seconds

Now, I could understand a re-banking charge if the miles were actually kept in a vault. I'm picturing a harried messenger taking a cab across town, riding an elevator to the 37th floor of an office tower, entering a secret code into a touchpad and safely stashing my miles in a locked drawer.

In actuality, re-banking took about three strokes on a computer keyboard, and it was accomplished in a maybe 10 seconds. Skrbec, who speaks for both Northwest and Delta as they shake out the details of their merger, says the fee is designed to discourage people from booking free flights and then changing plans at the last minute. Of course, if that's the issue, they could just charge customers for late cancellations.

He also says the $100 covers "administrative and other costs associated with removing miles from a SkyMiles account, reserving an award ticket and then re-depositing the miles." Unless you're booking tickets for a minor, that's typically handled online, which you would think makes the administrative costs somewhere between negligible and zero.

What's important, as Skrbec notes, is that "it's in line with what many carriers do." If everyone charges $100 for a make-believe inconvenience, nobody is wrong, or at least nobody is wronger than the other guy.

Logic tells you the real reason airlines zing you is that they're losing heaps of money and they're collecting cash wherever they can find it. If the reservations agent had told me that, I might have told him to take $10 more. That's my industry standard for an amusement fee.

Fathead branches out into famous artworks

The same Livonia company that brings you superheroes and quarterbacks to slap on your walls is now offering famous artworks. Vince Young of the Tennessee Titans, meet Vincent van Gogh of the impressionists.

Fathead has made its name with micro-thin adhesive wall graphics of everything from the Incredible Hulk to Tinker Bell. As of last Tuesday, it has branched out into 18-by-18-inch reproductions of the Mona Lisa and 63 other classics. The cost is only $19.99 apiece, a million times less than you'd pay for an original Monet that you can't even attach to your wall without making nail holes.

Since van Gogh's bank account is closed, Fathead licenses the works through an outfit that cuts checks to the museums that own the paintings. To browse, check http://www.fathead.com/smart/gallery">www.fathead.com/smart/gallery.

Neal Rubin