A fee for airline seats that recline?

ST. PAUL, Minn. — With most airlines, you pay as much as $10 if you want to talk to a human being when you buy a ticket. Free airline meals? They're going fast, replaced by box lunches for a fee.

Northwest Airlines is yanking pillows from most of its planes, following the lead of rival American Airlines, which estimates it will pocket some $675,000 in annual savings from the move.

Having racked up about $33 billion in losses in the past three years, the nation's airlines are searching for passenger services they can cut without much complaint and old and new services they can charge for.

"They will find a way to charge you for everything that is not nailed down on that plane," predicted Darryl Jenkins, a visiting professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., and an airline-industry consultant.

What could be next?

Fees for special baggage services and strong efforts to push travel insurance, suggests Jenkins. He also expects the rental of DVD and other media players could take off. American and United Airlines have been experimenting with such rentals, charging $10 or so for their use.

"The premium customers will get them free, and everyone else will pay," said Jenkins. Baggage represents a fertile fee territory. Already, Northwest charges coach passengers $80 for more than two checked bags. Heavy bags will cost at least $25 extra.

Another opportunity: cellphones. Whenever in-flight cellphone use is given a green light, it probably won't be free, says John Pincavage, of airline consultants Pincavage & Associates in Westport, Conn. "They may have to build a communication link on the plane (to facilitate cellphone use), and my guess is that you'd have to pay for it." And who said all airline seats are created equal? "They could charge for seats that recline, that have padded armrests," said Terry Trippler, publisher of farefacts.com, a Minneapolis-based online guide to low fares.

Also, carriers may prod customers to pay with debit cards instead of credit cards, said Randy Petersen, publisher of Inside Flyer magazine and an expert on frequent-flier programs.

Airlines typically pay a fee of 1.65 percent to 2 percent when they take a credit card and 1.5 percent for a debit-card transaction, according to the Nilson Report, which tracks the payments industry.