Originally Posted by
BingoWingo
Btw, this is also strange. I have United Mileage but I lack 4,500 miles for a free ticket to Perth. When I asked UA how much would I pay for the taxes, for the round trip, they quoted to me about USD100 only, plus 25 handling fee, via SQ, against Asiana's USD350 taxes. How do they compute how much we pay for taxes, I brought this up to Asiana and they couldnt explain why for a mileage ticket using UA(to be booked thru a star alliance carrier-SQ), it would cost less against what theyre charging. Can anyone explain to me how they compute the taxes and why those 2 airlines are different when it comes to computation with the taxes I need to pay.
Airlines all have different calculation of taxes for award ticket, we don't know for sure how do they calculate, some also include very high fuel surcharge, especially on asian airlines like OZ and NH. Every program also has its upside and downside about redemming award ticket, like maybe has less taxes for award tickets, but for example UA also has "starnet blocking", one maybe hard to find availability on partner carriers especially on premium carriers. But on the other hand, if you can find avaibility on UA, their taxes are often the lowest among all carriers, like I have used UA miles to redemm awards for ORD-HKG with partner carriers, even for flying F class, all I need is to pay only for $50.
For other *A partner carriers, it is always easy to find and redemm partner awards, what you see using ANA to research for award avaibility, basically you see what you see, unlike if you use UA miles, sometimes you see the availability on ANA, then you call, they will say they don't have it.