Originally Posted by
Knusper
Why do I get the local price regarding taxes & fees when using the online tool?
The online tool assumes you are booking the ticket from the location the first flight departs, as such it gives you the point of origin price. Both QF (in 2010) and CX (this year) have issued tickets I booked via the tool out of NRT (QF) and ICN (CX) at the Japan/Korea prices, despite their knowing that I was in CBR. However, if I went to a local travel agent in CBR to book the
exact same ticket, I'd be charged an ex AU price.
My understanding is that when booking online, the booking goes to the airline which is carrier of the first flight (in my case that would be Cathay Pacific or Japan Airlines). Do you mean that I can influence the taxes/fee of the entire ONE ticket (not only of the first flight) by chosing the carrier of the first flight? Or is it possible with the online booking to give the booking of the ONE ticket to an airlines of my choice (even when its not the carrier of the first flight) and I have not discovered this option yet?
The online tool will send the booking to the marketing carrier of the first flight (eg, you can fly on BA15 as the first flight, and have QF ticket if you book the QF320 codeshare - There are limits to this depending on the rules of the codeshare (eg, you can't book CBR-SYD on the AA code unless you also book SYD-US on an AA code).
If the first carrier is JL, RJ or S7, it will send the booking to AA to ticket. However this has been creating a bug in the tool where it will fail on the last page of the booking process. I'm not sure if this has been fixed yet.
You can adjust fees to an extent depending on the ticketing carrier (that carrier may not pass on fees for other carriers) or by carefully selecting different codes for each flight (I was able to save around $300 on my last DONE3 by using an IB code on a BA LHR-DXB - but in order to use that, I had to fly IB instead of BA for my previous MAD-LHR sector).