Emshaes

Is this really happening? In March 2004, I paid 150 euro reservation fee for Brussels/Frankfurt/Manila RT ticket. Two days ago, I paid the full amount and today my agent phoned me to ask 50 euro extra for fueltax. As agreed before, I will get the ticket this Friday but accordingly, I will not get my ticket unless I pay the extra. Also, my agent said that all airlines around the world are doing this. Am I left with no choice? Care to drop a line or more?
Thanks!
Ems

Rookie

Unfortunately, just this morning I saw reference on the TV news in the US about fare increases from all major carriers for fuel surcharges - just in time for the holidays.

Boo Hiss!

ira

Hi em,

I suggest that you pay the extra.

It's better than not getting your ticket.

degas

Why did you have to pay a 150E reservation fee? To lock in a deeply discounted price?

Christina

I think a lot of airlines are doing that. That is a very long flight so 50 euro know compared to March 2004 doesn't seem that much to me. You wouldn't have had to pay that probably if you had actually bought your ticket already, but you didn't want to. I'm amazed you could find anyone to hold a reservation for 8 months for you without you having to buy the ticket. I've never heard of a system like that where you can reserve a ticket at a certain price for months and only pay a small reservation fee.

rex

I'm not finding any news story on fuel surcharges. My family has a LOT of travel purchased (or awarded from FF miles accounts we have been "cleaning out&quot for the next several months. Is there really some kind of surcharge we may have to pay, retro-actively assessed, for tickets we are already holding?

It doesn't seem likely to be applicable to anything we will face, but I cannot connect the posting from Rookie to any news I can find online.

Most likely over-reacting here - - this would be a very big news story if it were broadly applicable for all tickets issued, not yet flown...

I'll be sure and share any news that crosses my radar screen on this which would be applicable to non-specific ticket purchases - - Emshaes' situation seems to be something else.

Best wishes,

Rex

LoveItaly

From reading Emshaes post it appears he is in Europe not the USA.

In Italy at least,the Italians can reserve airline tickets and pay for them much later. Italian friends are always so surprised that we do not have this type of arrangement with US airlines.

Renee

When I booked my flight to Prague, we were informed of the $50.00 pp surcharge imposed by Lufthansa in late October. Initially, we were suspicious of it until we read about those surcharges a few days later on CNN (if memory serves).

Rookie

Rex - it was Atlanta early morning local TV news - here's a link to a related article in the AJC:

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/busi...4/17fares.html

Of course in Atlanta anything Delta is major news these days, but I don't believe this is unique to Delta.

Best wishes.

italyss

There was also an article on this at //news.airwise.com on Oct 7 about the fuel surcharges being charged on different segments. I believe it only applies to tickets being purchased from mid Oct on. It said that they will knock off the fees when the price of oil goes below $40 a barrel. For example Luftansa now charges 17 euros per international flight leg, and 7 euros for each european domestic flight leg. Air France is also charging more now, as well as Quantas. Since the poster said that he had paid the full amount by Nov 15, and that two days later, the agent phoned to ask for the 50 euro surcharge. Obviously, the agent forgot to compute the extra fees at the time. They will have to be paid. I just returned back from France on Nov 3, and I noticed that the ticket agent from Air France was reading along the bottom of my ticket where all the tax info shows up. I bet she was trying to make sure that my fuel surcharge had been paid (it had been). It makes me wonder, even if you had purchased your ticket before mid October, they probably would make you pay it when you checked in.