Originally Posted by
zabes64
As we're finding out the difference is only $48 from Economy to Business that the UK government charges UA, I did a sample itinerary on Matrix, my flight was DXB-LHR-IAD and as a transit passenger the UK Passenger Service Charge was $48 for both Economy and Business class if you're in transit for less than 24 hours.
This is not quite right.
There is a Passenger Service Charge that you pay whenever you transit LHR, whether or not you are starting there. Gotta pay this all the time. Amount varies slightly depending on which airport you're in in the UK and fluctuates over time based on, like, inflation. See
http://www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?ca...0&pageid=12677 . This is an airport tax, nothing too weird about it.
Full stop; some PSC applies whenever you have a trip that enters/exits/transits LHR. Price varies a bit.
Separately, there is a £60 reduced-rate Air Passenger Duty that you pay whenever you START a journey from LHR to the USA. And if you fly in a cabin other than coach, you pay £120 instead. Amount varies based on distance between UK and the capital city of the destination country; it's £60/£120 to USA. This is about $100 and about $200 respectively; UA just codes it at $100 and pockets/eats the exchange rate difference. See
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rates/apd.htm for the APD documentation.
Specific problem here is that UA has some logic to charge the APD differential between coach and business when you upgrade a flight ex-LHR — but they forgot to write the software code to check whether you are in transit (and should not owe the extra APD) or not. This software error doesn't cost UA money, so no surprise that they haven't fixed it.