Airlines' board fees are dinging surfers

Because of the high fees, Long said he's cut back on eating out and partying when traveling.

"You have to skip nice meals and give up that nice bottle of tequila," he said.

U.S. airlines have been raising fares and fees on such things as the first checked bag and on-board pillows and drinks -- all of which were once included in the price of a plane ticket -- as a way to raise additional revenue amid a steep increase in fuel costs.

The surfboard fees are high because the boards require special care and extra handling, Delta said. They don't go through the normal baggage carousel but must be carried on special elevators to the claims area.

"There are handling costs associated with surfboards that we have to account for," Delta spokesman Kent Landers said. The hike in charges also reflects a general increase in fees to "cover and reflect the unprecedented increase in fuel costs," he added.

Fuel costs, which have increased more than 70% since last year, could leave the industry with more than $6 billion in losses this year, according to an airline trade group.

But surfers contend that the fees for their boards are unfairly high compared with other items. Although they are large and need special handling as an oversize bag, a typical short board weighs about 4 pounds while a larger board may swell to only 15 pounds.

"It's not the weight thing," said Marcus Sanders, a Huntington Beach surfer and editor of surfing website Surfline.com, whose airline fee guide received 20,000 hits in the first two days it was posted last month. "They just think that it's an extra pain on their employees, that the boards take up extra space on their planes and that we make up a small percentage of its passengers."

At Los Angeles International Airport on Wednesday, Mark Cowan was hit with an $80 fee for his kite board, which resembles a small surfboard that a rider stands on as he is pulled across the water by a large kite.

The fee charged by Hawaiian Airlines was on top of the extra $100 Cowan paid Delta to fly from Colorado to Los Angeles before his connecting flight to the island of Oahu.

"You know, I just realized I'm going to be paying $360 to take my board along," Cowan, a Ridgway, Colo., resident, said after checking in his board, which was 4 feet, 9 inches long and weighed about 11 pounds. "It's robbery."