excessive taxes air flights
 

I recently purchased roundtrip tickets from IAH(Houston) to Paris(CDEG). Different merchants such as BT-store, Travelocity,Booking Buddy,Sidestep,and various airlines such as Delta, American Airlines had attractive prices for tickets. However taxes raised prices from as low as $299.00 to $332.00 to $409.00 to over $840.00 to $1000.00 due to high taxes. Can anyone tell why they are so high? Last December, my spouse and I traveled one way to Barcelona from Houston for $700.00. This included taxes and all.

We are using AA FF points for a trip into Amsterdam and out of Paris, and our "free" tickets cost $339.00, including a $40. phone booking fee. It has been explained as the taxes and fees the airports charge. I've also seen some flights priced as $299 rt plus $400. fuel surcharge! So, do beware of those charges before you purchase.

A large part of these "taxes" (including 'fees' and 'surcharges') used to be included in the fare price so that you couldn't see them. However the airlines have been thrilled to be able to list them separately now. On the one hand, they can advertise misleadingly low fares in some countries (but not in France where I live, because they are obliged to advertise fares with all taxes and fees included), and then when they hit you with all of the other charges, they are able to cry "it's not our fault; it's those bad government people!"

The airlines use a business model where they can obtain additional revenue by declaring add-on costs as fees and taxes. They claim right to collect these add-ons but not transparent if these "required" fees were actually used as claimed.

When I first started to travel to Europe, the hotel cashiers thought I was an idiot for asking how much I needed to pay. They calmly repeated the price they quoted at the time of reservation. In the U.S., I expect to get hit with all sorts of mysterious fees and taxes on top of the quoted prices.

The Netherlands, like the UK, has a tax on flights. €10 per short flight, €45 per long haul flight pp. This came in on July 1st.
Plus there are landing fees, airport fees, assorted other fees and taxes which are applied for both the airport you are departing from and the one you are flying to, fuel surcharges etc etc, all in the extras on the basic price.
In the EU airlines are obliged to only advertise the all-in price so people are not misled into thinking they have a bargain only to find all the extras treble the basic price.
I accept all of those costs as a painful fact of life. The one charge that really gets me is the charge for using a credit card to book when they offer no other means of payment.

Frankly, I like being able to see how much the government makes on these tickets? Why should the airline get busted in the chops for high fares when a large % is going to the government?

<<< The one charge that really gets me is the charge for using a credit card to book when they offer no other means of payment. >>>

In the EU the price they show has to include the cost of booking - but many airlines offer one method (generally Electron) for which there isn't a fee

UK's Air Passenger Duty, levied at £10 for flights within Europe and £40 for long-haul (double for premium fares), raised around £2.4 billion (US$4.25 billion) in 2007.

<i>Frankly, I like being able to see how much the government makes on these tickets? Why should the airline get busted in the chops for high fares when a large % is going to the government?</i>

Frankly, it's not an issue that airlines cannot show the amount of taxes and fees (the major &quot;fee&quot; usually being their own fuel surcharge), but the fact that they use(d) the low promotional pre-tax&amp;fess for advertising.
They can still advertising that a fare from A to B is &quot;&euro;100 (incl. &euro;80 taxes&amp;fees)&quot;. But they can't advertise that route for &quot;&euro;20 plus taxes/fees&quot;.

How absurd would it be if your local public transit authority advertised a 10 cent ticket, but then asked you to insert another two dollars for fuel surcharges and fees once you got to the ticket machine.

The key issue here is misleading advertising and not prohibiting the airlines to show the customer how much they can keep.

alanrow - electron is fine if you are in the UK but not in the Netherlands, we have a different online payment system.
I was annoyed when I booked a ferry to the UK recently with Norfolk Lines. I went to the Dutch site to book it and the only payment options were Switch or credit card - for which I had to pay extra.Since they are obviously catering to Dutch/Belgian clients they could easily set up other payment means for them.
Ryanair only give the option of CC payment and charge you for the privilege.
My next flight will be from Germany or Belgium I think as it is much cheaper in both countries and I can drive to them easily. It rather defeats the object of the climate tax in NL - I will still fly but also will drive more, instead of getting the train, in order to do so. The cost of petrol is less than the cost of the taxes.
If I thought the new tax was going to be used for some climate improving project, or even to strengthening the sea dikes, I wouldn't mind so much - but it is just going into the general pot.

Even the taxes on FF tickets are starting to be excessive. I booked Delta , MCO-CDG, last spring for 50,000 miles and $80.00. I was just looking to book BA, MCO-LGW, in March and it came back 50,000 miles AND $504.00 in taxes!

I finally have enough frequent flyer miles for a ticket to Europe on Air France. I got all excited until I found that it was going to cost something like $450 for my free tickets.

For goodness sake, you do know what the total cost will be for the ticket, and what difference does it make if it is a tax or whatever? If you don't like it don't buy it.

We have 2 FF tickets booked for June 2009. Our total cost with all the fees/taxes for these two tickets is $169.40. I felt so fortunate when I booked this since I had heard the horror stories of those costs being a couple hundred dollars. BTW, this was booked via Continental.

If somebody &quot;likes&quot; to see how much the government is &quot;taking&quot; in taxes (I thought it was 'we, the people') on airline tickets, then they should also demand that it be listed on a can on beans, a Big Mac, an automobile or anything else they spend money on. There are all sorts of corporate taxes, state taxes, etc., that figure into the price of every product -- not just sales tax. Why should airlines separate everything out when nobody else does?

In the States, sales taxes are added onto those cans of beans at the register when you're cashing out.

I stand by my previous statement. If you don't like it, that's fine.

Carribean.. you are mixing beans with Jet A-1 fuel.

In the States, everyone knows that there will be an x% surcharge of taxes at check out. Supermarkets don't advertise their beans and bananas at pre-tax prices to lure you into their stores since you are educated by years of experience that your final costs will be whatever plus 8.5%, for example.

Airlines use the pre-tax&amp;fees scheme to advertise 1 cent fares from Dublin to Rome. The mark-up for &quot;taxes and fees&quot; is not an easy to foresee percentage as at your supermarket in the States, but differs by airport, both departing and arriving. It gets completely absurd when airlines add their fuel surcharges, since that is good ole capitalism, market prices going up for oil/fuel, but they want to keep their advertised prices low.

Keep in mind that the 'fuel surcharge' has always been part of the fare and is not at all a tax.

Planes did not use to fly fuel-free before there was a 'fuel surcharge' but hey -- guess what -- the fuel was part of the price we paid. Now they are pretending that the fuel is something that was just invented and maybe it used to be free.

You did not read my post attentively, Carrybean, because I made a point of saying that besides the sales tax, there are plenty of other (hidden?) taxes in that can of beans. Why are they not listed, I ask again?

Yes, this add-on tax/surcharge is a mess not only in Europe though. I usually pay around $325 in taxes/ add-on for a LAX-Bangkok round trip ticket. I vacation there annually and usually twice a year. After the fuel hiked up, the add-on amount went to about double so that now the add-on amount alone can be right under what half of the ticket would cost before the add-on. I'm glad I bought my ticket in Jan 2008 for Dec 2008/Jan 2009 before the huge hikes. I paid the $325. range amount.

As for frequent flyer tickets, this morning I just cashed in 50,000 miles for a round trip LAX to Buenos Aires ticket and only paid a total of $37.50 for the tax and $25.00 to have the ticket issued. This was on United. Happy Travels!