My wife needs to go to Israel and South Africa in Aug/Sept, and having failed to make LY understand the intricacies of their (well-priced) QF/LY RTW, we booked her on a DONE4 originating in MRU, thinking that despite the access costs the savings would justify that approach. She has an award ticket to Europe, and we thought that even buying her cheap one-ways to TLV and JNB (via ADD) we'd save money by going the MRU route compared to other options. Well, here are the results…

Booked itinerary - MRU-JNB-SYD-MEL-LAX//YVR-JFK-xDFW-SEA-xDFW-SJU-xDFW-FRA-MAD-TLV-xMAD-JNB, 15 segments, no LHR transits nor stopovers.

Base price MUR 161,000, taxes/fees MUR 30,231, total MUR 191,321; equates to US$ 5,157, $968, total $6,125 respectively.

That's 18.6% in total taxes and fees.

When I saw that figure, and knowing how much it costs to get to MRU in the first place, I had BA hold the res and I contacted AA to get the price on an ex-ARN DONE4. I got the price back this morning from TAL Aviation in Sweden:

Booked itinerary - ARN-xLHR-TLV-xMAD-JNB//CPT-JNB-SYD-AKL-LAX-MIA-xDFW-SEA-xDFW-MIA-MAD-ARN, 15 segments, one LHR transit, no stopovers.

Base price SEK 45,000, taxes/fees SEK 2,324, Total SEK 47,324; equates to US$ 6,405, $331, total $6,736 respectively.

That's 5.2% in total taxes and fees.

All in, the total difference is US$ 611. Set against the Europe-Israel-Africa ticket costs, we're over a grand ahead by going with AA. Plus she gets lots more EQM and doesn't take the ET redeye to JNB via ADD (well, that might have been interesting for me, but for her… )

Moral to the story - BA charges and fees in monopoly out-stations - ouch.