It's not a surprise to anyone that the cost of air travel has risen. It was easy to understand the increase in airfares when a barrel of oil cost $140. Today however the cost of a barrel of oil is $70 and airfares have not been reduced. My husband and I take an annual vacation to the Caribbean with our children. It's our one big vacation of the year, and needless to say we all really look forward to it. In the past we've been able to get some pretty good deals on tickets during the low season in the Caribbean, but we're finding it much harder.

Along with an increase in the cost of airfares the one major airline to the Caribbean, American, is cutting service to some more remote islands, making travel almost impossible now. My family travels to the small Caribbean island of Anguilla. When we started traveling there American had a mid-day flight out of San Juan airport that we took. A few years ago that flight was stopped. Then started again, then stopped. Then they stopped the early morning flight out of our local airport. What this meant for us was that we could no longer take the mid-day flight, if it was offered. We had to take the late flight from San Juan to Anguilla. That didn't get us to Anguilla until about 9PM, a whole travel day wasted.

Now along with the rise in the cost of airfares are additional baggage handling fees. Now I understand that most people do over pack, so it's not necessarily a bad thing, but we are a family of five. If you travel with your children you know that you can't pack light. We need their clothes and some toys. Two of my children are too young to carry their own small piece of carry on luggage. So not only are se facing increasing airfares we're looking at an additional $75 to $100 in luggage handling fees, each way. We're not sure what our vacation plans will be but it certainly seems like the airlines aren't going to be making it easy for us.

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