pilotboy1985YYC

I still can't find any AC flights. I tried YYZ-LAX on lot's of says in April and May and it kept giving me the error "Flights were not found for the selected date. Please select alternate date and resubmit your request."

intuition

I am looking at a ANA F award, germany-japan. Taxes and fees are 239,66€ on both ANA booking engine and on Matrix (when searching for the corresponding revenue ticket). Aegean quotes 252,61€, ie 12,95 higher.

I can't get the A3 site to specify what the extra fee is. Is there a way to find out?

Did others also notice that A3 quotes a higher taxes&fees or might this be a single hickup?

Xandrios

Have you set the POS to ATH for your ITA search? Aegean 'sells' you the ticket from Athens, so some of the taxes may come from that. Perhaps Greece charges higher taxes than Germany (default POS is departure city of the trip).

Chr04

12 euros is the “modernization and development airport tax” also known as 'Spatosimo'.

KLouis

Spatosimo was charged for flights departing Greek airports. Has the law been changed to include tickets paid for in Greece?

intuition

When I saw your reply I went "ah, of course, I forgot about ATH as POS, that changes everything".
But now I went back to matrix, priced the rev ticket with ATH as POS, and it comes out at the exact same total, and the exact same fees.

Is there a way to get the break-down of fees from the Aegean award booking engine? That would at least show me if all fees are higher or if they add some other fee not in Matrix.

If it is indeed the "spatosimo" it seems incorrect to add it to a ticket departing FRA.

intuition

Is the IATA fee code for this spatosimo "GR"?

Can anyone who ticketed a star alliance award online that does not depart a Greek airport check their reciept and report back if you were charged a GR fee of €12,95?

I've looked thorugh my last award departing FRA, redeemed throught the tele-office. It had no GR fee and no fee in the neigbourhood of 12€.

bostontraveler

I am really disappointed with A3. There are several glaring problems including:

-No availability on anything but TG or Eva Air to Asia from Europe. Haven't found a single day available on Singapore for example.
-Absolutely absurd fuel surcharges on LH and LX to the US in Business-- to the tune of €788 RT...or close to $1000. This is double what it was a year ago.

AC shows availability with reasonable fuel surcharges €110... but if you can't book them it's kind of useless.

Knobbgb

The phrases "Absolutely absurd charges" and "Lufthansa Group" are synonymous - it isn't Aegean's fault! As for the availability in general, lot of that is down to the individual airlines, although Aegean do seem to have less availability than some other *A carriers. Singapore are notorious for keeping availability for their own FF program. In particular, you'll not find availability in C class except on flights operated with A330 or 777-200 and there's never any F class available. I agree though - there do seem to be some glaring problems with the new online booking system with certain airlines just not bookable. There was a post here recently where somebody got A3 to waive the 20 Euro telephone booking fee because the flights weren't bookable online. That might be worth a try.

RedChili

This is much more than what I can see in YQ on any LH or LX search that I make via either Aegean or Itamatrix. What flights are you looking at?

E.g. via Itamatrix I can see that the total cost for a CPH-MUC-JFK-MUC-CPH should be DKK 2976, which is EUR 399. Of that amount "only" DKK 2020 or EUR 271 is YQ (see screenshot below).

If you're based in Paris, the total taxes go up significantly. Interestingly, YQ on CDG-MUC-JFK-MUC-CDG turns out as EUR 356, or 85 more than from CPH. Why that is so, I have no idea. In addition, there are four separate French taxes that amount to a total of EUR 77. There's not much that anyone can do about those taxes. The total that I find via Itamatrix is EUR 539 from CDG via MUC (see below). It's a lot, but the fuel surcharges are only half of what you claim.

Xandrios

That may be true, but CDG-ZRH-JFK JFK-MUC-CDG is charged 788 euro taxes through the Aegean award tool. It does not specify where those taxes come from.

headingwest

Why does the award flight tool restrict searches if you don't have enough miles?

It seems quite counterproductive to me - if Aegean wants to sell award miles, wouldn't it make more sense to let people see which flights they can book with purchased miles???

intuition

This is why we really need to find out the break down of online booked awards.
Perhaps OP could call Aegen and ask to be quoted the exact same itinerary as he found online. If those taxes are lower than the online tool, the tool seems to be broken (or rigged)

It would also be interesting to hear from people who recently booked an award via the tool. If someone could compare their reciept with matrix breakdown, then we could see if, when and how taxes&fees differ.

RedChili

There's something fishy going on with these taxes. When I try to book them as one-way rewards, I get 322 euros for CDG-ZRH-JFK, which is extremely high. But on the return, it's even worse. The return JFK-MUC-CDG has taxes of EUR 454, and there's no way that this can be correct. This is almost twice as what it should have been according to Itamatrix.

LO is pricing at 80 euros for JFK-WAW-CDG one way in business, TK at 181,

Interestingly, in economy, LH is "merely" 193 euros. SQ/LH via FRA is only 71 euros, but unfortunately only available in economy.

bostontraveler

This is exactly what I was talking about! There is a solidarity tax out of France but it's about €100. Why it would be MORE on the return is strange...