Those of us who were leaning toward Delta Air Lines because of its policy of allowing a free first checked bag can now abandon any favoritism. As of December 5 (just in time for the holidays!), it will start charging $15 for the first check bag. That figure is pretty much what everyone's charging these days. Only upstarts like JetBlue and Southwest don't.

The news, though, brightens in a few quarters. Simultaneously, Delta has decided to halve its fee for a second bag from $50 to a more sensible $25. Not many of us check two bags, though, so the net effect will still be negative for most casual travelers.

The major American airlines, now that they've got you on the hook for your checked bags, are relenting on their fuel surcharges. Delta and Northwest are eliminating their fuel surcharges. It's about time, too, since it's gotten pretty hard to defend them. The price of oil peaked back in the summer but is now less than half what it was at its peak, and in the past month, it has fallen about $30 a barrel.

Wow! I know businesses everywhere are feeling the need bring in more cash but charging paying customers just to open their files is a bit on the ridiculous side. Joel Watson, creator of Hijinks Ensue a "Geek Webcomic", went to his local FedEx Kinkos to print copies of a several comic strips and was not so politely informed that for every file after the first there would be a "digital rendering" fee of $2.50. To further emphasize the stupidity of this charge, the "digital rendering" fee essentially covers the clerk double clicking on a file!

To me adding $2.50 onto a customer's print order is as dumb as tacking a fuel surcharge onto a taxi ride. Both of these services require what the extra fee is supposed to cover; you can't print a file without opening it just like you can't get anywhere in a taxi without gas. If a company needs to charge an extra fee in order for a service to remain viable then the price should simply be raised rather than hidden on a receipt or behind a technical sounding phrase like "digital rendering"!

Carnival Corp., which in 2007 was among the first cruise companies to implement a fuel surcharge when prices spiked, has announced it'll be one of the first to get out. For 2010 bookings on the company's six major lines (Carnival, Costa, Cunard, Holland America, Princess, and the Yachts of Seabourn), the much-dissed fuel surcharge will be gone.

At the same time, Carnival said it would also be raising fares a little. The increase amount hasn't been announced yet, so it's hard to say from this vantage point whether it's just robbing Peter to pay Paul. But raising prices at this time of year is nothing unusual in travel biz, which sets its rates for the future well in advance.

For their part, the airlines of America are not budging. Last month, reps at several of them said that although fuel prices were indeed lower, they were still running higher than their accountants had expected when they set the current budgets, so the fuel surcharges would stay.

That doesn't entirely square with the rest of the air industry, though. Several international carriers, including Qantas, KLM, Air France, and Malaysian, have cut them. Northwest recently reduced its fuel surcharges for cargo, but not for people. All this while the major players in America and the United Kingdom are keeping them as-is. Some analysts are staying it'll stay this way at least until (and if) oil drops below $80 a barrel and stays there for a while.

Grant Martin reported on our sister blog Gadling that Delta is going to levy a $25 fuel surcharge on domestic tickets bought with frequent flyer miles. International flights will ring up a $50 charge.

Does this make sense? The airline convinces me to sign up for its frequent flyer program hoping to gain my loyalty by giving me swag for each flight. Now I'm sold, and fly Delta for a few years, the very epitome of a loyal customer. The marketing tactic has succeeded brilliantly. Every company lusts for loyal customers.

Then I go to redeem those frequent flyer miles, and I find that most of the flights I want are booked (but I can have all the free magazine subscriptions I want). When I finally do manage to use my miles to book a flight, Delta hits me up for chump change at the gate.

Now I'm no longer a loyal customer; I'm a pissed ex-customer. How many dollars were spent on cultivating me as a customer? Thousands. How much did it cost the to destroy all of that marketing? $25. Is it any wonder the airlines are a mess?

More travel stories

I hadn't called my favorite pizza place in a while because I've been making my own (it's cheaper and I've been trying to eat mostly organic food). But I was going out for the night, leaving my husband alone with three boys, so I called Rudy's and ordered the best deal: the $9.99 medium pepperoni pizza.

"There's a $15 minimum now," said the voice on the other end, apologetically. "Gas is $4 a gallon, you know."

I wasn't the only one to be hit with expenses due to rising gas prices (and what's worse, my husband didn't eat the $5.99 antipasto salad I ordered). Many businesses are starting to charge for delivery, or tacking fuel surcharges on top of existing prices. The Washington Post points to a $10 increase in the cost of a mowed lawn for one woman; off-the-charts fuel surcharges at grocery delivery service Peapod; and the surcharges to ship packages at UPS and FedEx, going up by a percentage point to 9.5% on July 6 thanks to the ever-rising cost of diesel. Green Daily wrote about a fuel surcharge for traffic violations that will go into effect in one Georgia town July 1.

Naturally, not everyone is cool with the added on costs.