<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Steve M:
Are you looking at a paper ticket? Does the amount listed next to "fare" have a 2-letter designator next to it? If so, it's also a tax. The problem is that the standard ARC ticket stock doesn't have enough lines to indicate all the different kinds of taxes and fees there are today, so they sometimes have to print a tax amount on the "fare" line. You should see an amount of $0 above this, with no designator next to it. That is the base fare.</font>
To follow up on my own post, I've had a chance to take a closer look at an actual flight coupon. As far as I can tell, amounts in the lower left corner of the ticket can be broken down into two categories:
- Those with a 2-character prefix are taxes or fees of one sort or another. Examples include YC, US, and XT. As far as I know, these codes are internal to the airline industry (probably set by IATA).
- Those with a 3-character prefix are base fares, or total amounts paid. The 3-character code represents the ISO currency code in which the amount is stated.
So, in order to detemine the particulars of brians51's situation, we need to know the details of what's printed on his ticket.