Originally Posted by
BA6501
I class is both revenue and award, on BD. Forgot P too, sorry.
Actually, to check taxes on BD flights, just use flybmi.com!
flybmi.com only lets you select pairs and not multi-city unfortunately.
In the fare-rules P is mentioned as Economy fare excursion, so I do not know why ITA is showing it as a business class fare!?
Originally Posted by
BristolTraveller
It's a fair question, because *some* airlines (Paddington Bear hard stares at LH, LX, SN) vary their fuel surcharges based on fare class, and of course APD can vary based on cabin too.
I have usually found that doing a trial booking on ITA using C (for Award Business) and B (for Award Economy) gives me accurate tax figures. Certainly accurate enough to budget with, and to argue the toss with the ICC when their fantasmagorically calculated number is hundreds of pounds more.
The other benefit of using C and B is that they are Star aligned classes, so you should find them correctly mapped on all *A airlines. (Obviously, put ITA into the "don't check seats" mode and use the /f bc=C or /f bc=B operand to force it into the relevant fare class).
"usually" is the key here. I have tried the same booking on lh.com and it books into "V", ITA books into "Y" if I do not specify class and let it search for economy.
By specifying class on ITA, which I normally do, I get varying taxes.
For example, Y gets higher tax, then B, M, U, H get same but lower than Y, then V gets lower although it is more expensive fare bucket than U,H, all rest seem lower as you go lower in the chain of eco fare buckets.
Business class is even stranger. C, D, J get lower tax figure than P although P is shown as Economy fare in the fare-rules on ITA (though it says it covers business class, weird!). On the first page of BMI forum sticky, it mentions P as premium economy for mid-haul and long-haul!
The booking that I have made shows the class as Premium Economy but do not know what CLASS have ICC used for that sector. Tried Amadeus/SAS but can not see the exact breakdown till it is ticketed!