KevinM2

Can anyone tell me why an MFU'd (from WT+ to J) ticket has an extra £120 in taxes/fees/surcharges?

I was going to book 4 return flights from LHR-SFO (MFU'd to J) but noticed before I confirmed, that the total was almost £500 more than I was expecting to pay.

The cost of 1 LHR-SFO WT+ ticket was £1113.89 (£673 ticket plus £440.89 taxes/fees etc). The cost of 1 LHR-SFO WT+ ticket MFU'd to J was £1233.89 (£673 ticket plus £560.89 taxes/fees etc).

Don't suppose anyone can give me the extra charge breakdown can they please?

Thanks.

henkybaby

Isn't that the infamous 'luxury tax' that you pay in J and F?

layz

Don't the higher premium rates of UK govt taxes start at anything above basic economy, so WTP also pays that higher tax rate?

MadProfessor

It's the fuel surcharge which differs by class as well.

Skipcool3

Let's work on the facts........

UK APD (air passenger duty) is £65 for a flight in economy to the USA.

It is £130.00 for any other travel class (WT+, CW, F)

The additional charge between WT+ and CW is also not related to any other government / federal tax, user fee, etc etc.

It is purely British Airways surcharging, what ever they decide to call it.

The only difference to costs that I can work out is that in Club you can take an extra suitcase, and perhaps an extra bag @ 23kgs "costs" £60.00 each way to handle / fuel etc?

xenole

No, just greed.

KevinM2

That's the one ^

I forgot that there was an option to itinerise the fees, and everything is the same (including the government luxury tax) except for the fuel surcharge.

For the standard WT+ flight, the fuel surcharge is £239 but for the MFU'd ticket, the fuel surcharge jumps to £359

I suppose I have answered my own question (thanks to the MadProfessor's prompt ^), but you have to ask why I use more fuel sitting in 62K than I do sitting down the back of the plane

Ah well, there's £500 of spending money gone that I hadn't accounted for

Thanks

henkybaby

Your seat is heavier and you take up the space of 2 WT pax.

UKtravelbear

And it's not just BA that has variable YQ depending on the cabin class.

Getafix

More space occupied on aircraft compared to WT+ or WT.

Just saw that Henkybaby answered it.

littlefish

I'm pretty sure the OPs extra £120 is the higher fuel surcharge for CW over WT+ for the return flights.

I did a mini-analysis on an envelope for a long-haul single sector the other day. The fuel surcharges were: WT £239, WT+ £276, CW £359.

Very crudely BA are implying a CW passenger takes up 50% more weight all-told. I tried, honestly I really tried , to look at this.

I would believe the CW seat is significantly heavier than the WT equivalent but could find no real data on this.
I do believe the average CW passenger carries more check-in than the average WT (35kg to 22kg on my estimates, which recognises a lot of Gold and Silver travel WT).
I didn't find much else where fuel burn would be different.

The funny thing is: I came up with the average WT weight-load being 112kg + the WT seat; vs. average CW at 127kg + the CW seat. We'd be talking 10kg and 50kg seats to make BA's sums right; which doesn't seem so unbelievable.

Disclaimer: The above is merely on an envelope, it is not claimed as fact

LCY8737

If you take the weight of a seat and compare that to the weight of the rest of the plane it is most likely negilible. It might be as simple as "how much money do we need for YQ?" and then creating a formula that comes up with the desired result. Or it might be the square footage taken up by a CW seat vs a WT+ seat. Or it might be the square root of WW's birthday multiplied with the expected date of the next strike/volacano eruption/fog/snow/... incident.