photodave

1. It's a departure tax (Air Passenger Duty or APD), so it will apply to your award departure LHR-NBO, and then again on your paid return from LHR to the US. The tax is payable whichever class of service you book, it's just higher for premium cabins (J and F). It may be possible to have the PNRs linked in such a way that this is regarded as a connection rather than a separate arrival and departure, in which case the tax should not be payable. Others on the board may have more detailed information, and I believe there is at least one other thread that deals with this.

2. Yes, since your LHR departures are now considered as connections and not separate departures.

checkerboard

Before ticketing either of the two, I'd recommend calling the EXP desk and simply asking them to book the whole trip in one PNR. If you ticket both the award & the revenue component at the same time, even though they will indeed be two separate tickets, the UK-APD will NOT be charged in either direction (asuming same-day transits), as both ticket numbers will contain reference to eachother, in the form of a shared record locater. If for some reason the itinerary autoprices with the APD included, ask the EXP agent to have the Tariff desk manually adjust it.

Unless you have a specific desire to visit mainland Europe, there's no APD-related need to spend a day flying back & forth to a third country (especially given the timing of the NBO flight, which would necessarily cause an overnight somewhere).

Robt760

The Flyerguide Wiki comes in pretty handy for most questions (IMO) Give it a whirl and see if this gives more definitive info: Flyerguide Wiki - AA Upgrade Taxes

tkelvin69

Thanks, I did call the EXP desk and this is what I was told:

Yes, they can combine a paid ticket with a connecting award ticket but they cannot combine a paid ticket, an award, and a SWU on the same PNR. They can cross reference the paid ticket/SWU and the award ticket from 2 PNRs to show a connection and thus avoid the luxury tax.

imajes

Pricing up a LHR>JFK return, and seeing the following:

LHR > JFK : 173 USD
JFK > LHR : 149 USD

Taxes.... 162.20 USD

WTH?

Where does 100 GBP of taxes & fees come from?

(i did a quick search and found nothing...)

gemac

It must have been an extremely quick search. Her Majesty needs your loot - it is part of the British Government's plan (thay call plans "schemes" over there) to keep people from flying so much. Right now, they are discussing whether to raise it, as people insist on flying anyway, particularly tourists keep flying to Britian and spending money there.

imajes

It was a quick search, but 'uk taxes' just spat back every thread.

I didn't know we were so keen on the taxes; i know we have luxury taxes on upgrades etc, but i didn't know there were such high rate taxes for base prices.

That's going to make travel suck pretty hard; being based in london, i return 3-4 times a year during my travel; that's a rather large amount of gratuity to my annoying government.

Anyone considered getting eurostar or a cheap airline to fly to paris or similar and then embarking from there?

HNL

The French have high taxes as well.

imajes

Sure, well.... CDG, FRA, MAD. All reasonable connection points.... (but that makes me wonder if the taxes are actually EU mandated or UK mandated. hmm....)

YVR Cockroach

If you are connecting through the rest of the E.U. (or all of Europe/EEA?) on the same ticket within 24 hrs of the intermediate point, you pay the whole whack.

imajes

Good to know. I'd probably just jump on eurostar and hang out in paris for a few days before getting a cheap ride to somewhere else and then connecting to my destination..

scubadu

So would the additional days of food/lodging, etc. in Paris be less than simply paying the taxes? I somehow struggle to believe that.

Additionally, I'm a bit confused; you're an AA EXP, traveling out of LHR "3-4 times a year" if I'm understanding your post correctly and you are just now noticing the taxes?

Regards

YVR Cockroach

U.K. Air Passenger Duty (determined by distance between London and capital of "final" destination) GBP45
Airport usage fees (payable to BAA) GBP 12.80

There are U.S. arrival fees in addition

gemac

You do know that if you put it in the way you typed it above, the search engine would ignore the 'uk' part and return every reference to taxes, right? To get the search engine to actually use a search term of three letters or less, you have to put it in double quotes ("XXX"),

All Europe has high taxes, but for air travel taxes, the British lead the E.U., probably because the other countries see air travel taxes as a way to punish their successful citizens, where the British see them as a way to reduce the amount of air travel. Unfortunately, the price elasticity of demand for air travel seems to be high enough that the British have not yet reached a tipping point.

gemac

Your information is partial.
Band 1 (Zero-2000 miles) 2009 = GBP 11, 2010 GBP 12
Band 2 (2001-4000 miles) 2009 = GBP 45, 2010 GBP 60
Band 3 (4001-6000 miles) 2009 = GBP 50, 2010 GBP 75
Band 4 (over 6000 miles ) 2009 = GBP 55, 2010 GBP 85.

These are the duties for the least expensive class of travel. Everything else is twice as much. Presumably, that would include even WT+ on BA.

I think the 2009 rates became effective Nov. 1, 2009, and the 2010 rates Nov. 1, 2010.