Now Delta Airlines has decided to levy a $50 fee on fliers zipping off to far-flung international destinations. This is, of course, on top of the fee Delta and most other domestic carriers charge for the first and second bags on domestic routes.

The airlines and other supporters of such plans love to tout the fact that these new baggage fees are more just. Outwardly, I suppose, this argument makes sense. Why shouldn't passengers who carry more baggage pay more to fly?

Unfortunately, the myriad other costs imposed on passengers make this plan a bad deal for consumers.

Our story begins with the prototypical cash-strapped American consumer. Naturally, this person, who simply wants to fly from point A to point B at the lowest possible dollar cost, would do his or her best to avoid paying the checked baggage fees. So fliers who would have brought nothing more than a small backpack or purse onto the plane now lug their backpack in addition to an enormous, unwieldy bag. A bag just small enough to fit into an overhead bin but just large enough to hold a two week's worth of clothes.

At the individual level, every passenger who carries a bag onto the plane instead of checking it incurs a number of costs. They expend more energy lugging their extra carry-on bags from the parking lot through the terminal and onto the airplane. At the security screening area, they have more to unpack and more for agents to rifle through if they are marked for extra scrutiny.

Fliers also either spend more time waiting in line to be screened — so they have to spend even more of their time at the airport — or pay more to hire more security screeners to compensate for the extra stress on the screening system.

Other fliers also suffer when one person carries a bag onto the plane in lieu of checking it. Even when I pay the fee to check my bag, I inevitably spend an eternity waiting behind a hoard of people who resemble sherpas more than leisure travelers. It likely takes more time to load passengers onto the plane, since people spend more time battling over the space in overhead compartments. This, of course, either makes the flight more expensive. Either the airline wastes more money by keeping the plane and its crew sitting on the ground for more time than necessary, or passengers have a worse experience in the cabin because the crew has less time to vacuum or otherwise clean.

I'm also convinced I spend more time waiting to disembark after landing because of the checked baggage fee. Invariably, the people in front of me take a several millennia to deplane as they first recall which bin they crammed their luggage into and then try to pry it out without giving any of the other passengers a concussion.

Airlines should have just raised fares by $10 or $15 and kept their "check two bags free" policy. Even given the current economic mess, I find it immensely hard to believe that the demand for air travel is so elastic that a three or four percent difference in airfares makes that much of a difference. And that ignores the fact that travelers would probably have a better experience if they and everyone else didn't have a huge incentive to avoid checking bags.