tlr

I might have to ditch an L class long-haul ticket. Travel agent is claiming that the taxes on that are not refundable, which strikes me as rather surprising. Is anybody here able to shed some light on what the common conditions for taxes are?

(Ticket issued in France, for that matter.)

San Gottardo

Strictly speaking he's wrong - all taxes are always refundable.

BUT (there's a big "but"): the moment you claim back your taxes Air France will re-calculate your fare to the actual trip you've done. In other words, they will see how much it would have cost you to do a oneway instead of the L class return you've bought. Then there are two scenarios:

1. The one-way fare is lower than the ticket you hold. In that case, they re-imburse the fare difference between what you've paid and the one-way fare, AND they re-imburse the taxes.
2. The one-way fare is higher than the ticket you hold. In that case, you owe the difference between what you've paid and the one-way fare to Air France. The amount you owe will be reduced by the taxes you have already paid.

In my mind this is strictly illegal, as Air France mixes two transactions that can't be mixed: one is the fare difference, which is a transaction between you and Air France. The other one is the tax, which is a transaction between you and the state/the airport authority. Air France only collects the taxes on their behalf and passes them on to the state/the airport authority in case you really fly. So, if they were doing things correctly they should do the following:

1. Re-imburse you the taxes, no matter what.
2. Have a separate discussion with you about fare differences.

Don't even try discussing that with them on the phone. This is far too complex for the staff in the call centres, and even supervisors don't get the concept. I've tried, and their ever repeating the same thing/not listinening/not understanding got me so frustrated that I finally gave up (quite a strategy: make sure the people dealing with financial claims are stupid enough to drive anyone to desparation and into giving up ).

In sum: bye bye to your taxes (at least until some consumer association takes this up.) BTW, it's not only Air France doing this, other airlines follow the same procedures.

GenevaFlyer

creber,

From the OP, I don't see any mention of only using have the ticket. In this case, if the ticket is fully cancelled, taxes are refundable according to me (minus deduction of any cancellation fees of course).

Cheers,

GenevaFlyer

tlr

Correct. This is about throwing away the complete ticket.

jarino

For an unused ticket booked through an online TA, the tax refund took 10 months, but I didn't push it: First I called AF but an unfriendly agent told me that I should have requested the tax refund before departure of the first flight, but I think he mixed up something with the fare rules.
Then I sent a fax request to AF. Only 10 months later, they sent a letter apologizing for the long delay and processed the refund.

farci

Taxes are a disbursement by the TA, in other words not part of his profit margin. No matter which country, he has no grounds for withholding these except for a negotaible service fee

JOUY31

I had no problems being reimbursed for taxes on an award flight that I cancelled. It took about a week. It has reportedly taken up to a month for other AF pax in a similar situation.

San Gottardo

Oops, sorry. The question with the partly-used ticket came up so often that I must have had a Pavlovian reflex to answer to that question. Apologies.

As for taxes on your not-at-all-used ticket: shouldn't be a problem at all. Neither legally nor operationally.