A stripper once told me she made $1,500 a week, mostly in $1 bills. I’ve since learned of another occupation where you get $1 bills from anxious people, but in this job you don’t have to take off your clothes.
I’m talking about skycaps, the people who check your bags at the airport curb.
Skycaps are among “the 10 most overpaid jobs in the U.S.,” according to a 2003 article by MarketWatch. It said a decent skycap at a busy airport can make $75,000 to $100,000 a year in tips.
Skycaps I talked to at Denver International Airport laughed at those figures, saying they make as little as $25,000 and as much as $60,000. It depends on seniority. The most senior skycaps get the first – and most trafficked – podiums along the drop-off driveway. Newbies get the last and least-used ones.
Also, Denver isn’t New York or San Francisco, where people are more likely to have a tipping ethic. “About 50 percent of the people are pretty chintzy,” said one DIA skycap I spoke with.
Most skycaps are not airline employees. They work for companies that contract with the airlines. Typically, they make a nominal hourly rate – often less than $3 an hour. The big money is in tips.
They are the valets of the airline industry. They save travelers the time and hassle of waiting for a harried airline agent at the counter. In return, it’s customary to give skycaps a tip of $1 or $2 for every bag checked.
Systemwide, this adds up to a lot of money. Millions of dollars a year. It’s enough to make bankrupt and struggling airlines drool, which is why they devised a scheme to tap this largesse.
United, American, Northwest and Alaska airlines have begun charging $2 a bag for curbside check-in at several airports across the country. Most of this money will go to the contracting companies that provide the service. The airlines will no longer pay these contractors, cutting millions in annual costs, and they will get a fraction of the new revenue stream.
And the skycaps? They say they will be getting a lot less in tips.
United started charging for curbside service at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport last week. The carrier plans to do the same at DIA, but United spokeswoman Jean Medina said the airline hasn’t announced when.
One DIA skycap told me he expected to get a raise from about $2 to about $5 an hour once airlines start charging passengers for curbside check-in. But what’s $3 an hour in wages to a guy who can make that much in tips in about 60 seconds?
Another skycap told me he wasn’t concerned: “People will get used to it, just like they do with the price of gas.”
John Poitevin, a Denver information technology worker, said he recently walked away from a curbside checkpoint at the Seattle airport when he saw Alaska Airlines was charging $2 a bag.
“I’ve always used skycap service when available, but for the extra $4 it would have cost me, I carried my bags into the terminal, probably 25 or 30 paces, and used the self-service kiosk,” he said.
Chas Klier, a skycap in Fort Myers, Fla., told me it’s infuriating to watch airlines chisel skycaps when they should be raising fares. Airlines, in a heated competitive battle, have been cutting costs instead.
“If this is the way airlines think they can make money they are wrong,” Klier said. “All they have created is Greyhound with wings. And if they keep selling tickets for $200 a round trip, they’re going to go out of business.”
Denver’s Frontier Airlines has differentiated itself with signs asking customers not to tip its skycaps. Spokesman Joe Hodas told me its skycaps are employees – not contractors – and work for salaries.
“You don’t tip the guy at the check-in counter inside. We don’t feel it’s appropriate to tip our curbside guy either,” Hodas said. “We are consumer-centric not due to the fact that we’re being tipped, but because we want to offer good customer service.”
I dropped by Frontier’s curbside checkpoint to see this philosophy in action. The sign was defaced and turned sideways so it was hard to see. The “No” in “No Tipping” had been scratched away. A skycap was graciously accepting tips.
It’s still good work if you can get it.
Al Lewis’ column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. Respond to Lewis at , 303-820-1967, or alewis@denverpost.com.
