Many air travelers will soon find they’re being smacked by airlines with an additional and potentially costly expense for the convenience of flying. An expense in part caused by the Catch-22 consequence of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) prohibitions on certain carry-on items and the escalation of air carrier baggage handling fees.

Most airlines will soon begin to charge flyers at least $50 round-trip for checking a second piece of luggage in the hope of raising hundreds of millions of dollars without having to increase air fares.

Under severe financial pressure from high fuel prices and other rising operating expenses, airlines are now charging flyers for anything more than their seat. But the upcoming new fees for luggage could tack on hundreds of dollars to a family vacation and business travel, especially for businesspersons who must carry product samples, etc. Indeed, traveling with bags that are heavier than 50 pounds or are oversize will cost you.

Because TSA limits the amount of liquids, gels, and sprays that a person can carry on board a plane, many flyers have been forced to check more bags. But they’re soon going to have to pay extra to check those extra bags in which they must put all the stuff TSA disallows in carry-on bags, and even more if these bags exceed weight restrictions.

For example, if you fly United after May 5, that second overweight, oversized bag will cost you $450 round-trip. Delta will begin charging you $660 round-trip for a third checked bag weighing 71 pounds.

American, United, Delta, and Continental will be charging passengers $200 round-trip for oversized checked luggage. Southwest and JetBlue will charge $100.

Oh, and US Airways says it may or may not refund fees for delayed or temporarily lost luggage. And United says it won't refund baggage fees - even if it loses your bag.

Don’t expect any better service for these new expenses, either, as these new fees won’t result in any better baggage handling, the airlines concede … in almost a nose-thumbing after thought.

By the way, in 2005, US airlines lost 10,000 bags a day on average, the worst performance since 1990.

By 2007, the rate of lost luggage per 1,000 passengers had skyrocketed 23 percent over 2005, according to the Department of Transportation. The cited reasons: The surge in the number of flyers, airline budget cuts, delayed flights, and TSA’s restrictions on carry-on items and increased luggage screening.

Meanwhile, in 2006, domestic air travelers filed more than four million reports of mishandled bags, an escalation of a whopping 40 percent over the number of reports flyers lodged in 2005. The Department of Transportation says 98 percent of misplaced bags are eventually found, but that’s hardly little consolation to travelers who probably need things that are in those bags.

Very soon, some of those bags will cost upwards of hundreds of dollars to check, and, if they’re misplaced or lost, those costs may or may not be reimbursed.

Although statistics show airlines lost fewer bags and delayed fewer flights in January 2008 than in January 2007, customer complaints increased more than 75 percent.

Meanwhile, federal records show that during the last three years travelers reported tens of millions of dollars in things missing from their luggage. TSA said nearly 42,000 travelers reported items valued at more than $31 million missing from their luggage.

Add to all this the finding of a recent federal report that about 24 percent of domestic flights arrived behind schedule during the first ten months last year - the industry's second-worst performance record since data began being collected in 1995.

We’ve said it before: If the Department of Homeland Security would adopt more effective methodologies for ferreting out suspicious flyers (see the upcoming May HSToday report on the people-focused security approach at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport), it could alleviate many of the airport screening burdens, thus allowing many flyers to carry on board items they now must put in their checked-in luggage – some of which these flyers will soon have to pay extra to take with them on their travels.