US Airways Dividend Miles (Pre-FlightFund Merger) - Security Tax Question

Am I being a totally cheap Cockroach here. This hasn't been addressed yet and I want to gain some insight before I call Consumer Affairs.

Effective June 1st the $2.50 per segment security tax is suspended for I think 90 days. In april 2003 I booked 4 award itineraries for June travel. When I booked the flights I paid the $40.00 Security Tax due.

My question is now that the tax has been suspended do I have to right to demand a refund from US Airways?

Yes. Failing that, if are confident that you will not lose your seats, exercise your CP status, re-deposit the tickets, get the fee refunded, and then immediately rebook.

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Saving the world, one clue at a time.

Even more convoluted, I am departing 5/29 & returning 6/2. Am I due a refund for the two segments that will fly after 6/1?

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by ClueByFour:
Yes. Failing that, if are confident that you will not lose your seats, exercise your CP status, re-deposit the tickets, get the fee refunded, and then immediately rebook.

</font>

Well thank you for your honesty! You know I wouldn't have given it a second thought had it not been for Mr. Steve Rice, Manager of the US Airways Club and his comment to me, "We are and industry of fine print" when I took him to task. Well Mr. Rice is right! And I fully intend to determine exactly what the fine print is on this. He started the customer as enemy with me and if I am certain I am right, I'll drag the B*stards into Small Claims court!

I will post the response from Consumer Affairs when/if I recieve one.

The answer from Consumer Affairs is:

The security fee is lifted for all fares purchased between June 1, 2003 and September 1, 2003.

Please note that according to Consumer Affairs I am NOT entitled to a refund because I purchased the Tickets prior to June 1. Anybody know if this is the way the law is written or is US trying to get over on us yet again?

I read somewhere (will search for it), that the security fee may be going away, but the airlines are going to raise fares the exact amount. So in essence they are just going to pocket it. Could try and get a refund, but I imagine your fares will be just a little higher. Guess you money will be going to U instead of Uncle Sam

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030509/bs_nm/airlines_fares_dc_1

See discussion:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/008612.html

I think the answer is that if you bought your ticket prior to June 1 it is gone. If you get an award ticket on June 1 you do not pay. So the cockroach thing to do is to redeposit and get a new ticket per ClueByFour.

I am waiting until June to get some award tickets.

I know that when I've booked tickets and then a new fee came in I wasn't required to pay the new fee (even 9/11) since that wasn't the rules when I bought the ticket.

In reverse fashion, if I bought the ticket and then the fee was removed, I don't think I'd get the credit back either.

Since you have the redeposit and re-ticket possibility for awards you should be able to do that and get your $20 (June flights only) back. (Since you canceling would open 4 award seats I would think it wouldn't be a capacity problem.) If it was a purchased ticket you'd probably just find that the ticket price went up by $5 each way to counteract the $5 reduction in 9/11 fees and it wouldn't be worth the effort.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by StSebastian:
(Since you canceling would open 4 award seats I would think it wouldn't be a capacity problem.)</font>

I could be wrong, but I don't think award seats work in quite the method you mentioned. For instance, if you booked 4 award seats in X/Z inventory several months ago, and now the flight only has 7 seats left to sell, most of those 7 seats will be in B and Y inventory... then redepositing those 4 award seats (X/Z class) will put those 4 seats back into inventory, but probably into B and Y class (so now US Airways has 11 seats left to sell). I doubt the 4 award seats will ever go back into X class inventory if the flight is close to selling out. It isn't a linear relationship...
So my point is, PineyBob, before you redeposit and then try to redeem again, call usairways (or check on usairways.com) to make sure that there are 4 more seats that you can redeem.. otherwise you may not get your award seats back once you redeposit...

[This message has been edited by uschpr (edited 05-27-2003).]