controlz

Up until 5 minutes ago, I was of the opinion that tax/fees on point redemptions are only expensive out of London.

Well, I was just looking at a Star Alliance redemption from Chicago to Munich in business class, and the tax is USD691.46 one way (booking through Singapore Airlines). I also tried this to Madrid and got a similar result. I was hoping somebody could explain why the tax so high? Based on this, I'd rather pay cash and get the frequent flyer tier points!

Thank you.

Often1

The only taxes I see for a one-way ticket departing ORD for MUC are:

$18.60 International departure tax
$4.50 Passenger facility charge (maximum)
$5.60 Security fee

$28.70 Total

There should be a breakdown of the taxes, please break that down for us? What carrier?

cas_de

Two magic letters: YQ

controlz

Lufthansa booked using Singapore Airlines Krisflyer points. Breakdown attached.

Often1

OP - Your initial complaint was about taxes. The big item in your breakdown is the carrier surcharge. That is imposed by your carrier and is not a tax.

If you change your thread title to "why is the carrier surcharge so much" it will be accurate.

It is at that level because that is what the carriers are able to get. Essentially, there is no such thing as an award redemption on LH using Krisflyer. It is miles + cash and the cash in this case is $650.

The taxes will not change as between carriers (although not all of them will be charged on a pure no-surcharge redemption).

controlz

Gotcha - apologies for the mistake, I am a noob!

So to confirm, if I booked this with Aeroplan or Lufthansa points, the surcharge could be a lot less?

Often1

Yes. Or with UA and it will be $0.

chris63

In this case it’s LH passing their charges through to KF because your on LH metal.

R.O.

The surcharge is roughly the same when booking through LH M&M. Not sure about Aeroplan.

cfischer

Aeroplan will also charge YQ, United will not. If the OP can book UA metal ORD-MUC then there is no YQ surcharge.

R.O.

There's no YQ, either, if you book that flight on LH metal through UA MP.

moondog

UA miles might not be worth much these days, but they are useful for this type of thing.

It's better to save the SQ miles for cases in which they are valuable, such as premium cabins on SQ itself.

R.O.

I think we answered the OP's question so it may be okay to drift a bit off-topic.

Sure.

But I guess the other issues are availability and the removal of award charts. I mean, traditionally, I suppose the thing one would have in mind is "saver award availability" which should mean you can book a *A award through any *A program.

But the truth is some airlines--including UA--recently ditched award charts.

So, in principle, UA might be attractive for TATL awards because they don't tag on any carrier-imposed surcharges.

But, on the other hand, they might offer an astonishingly poor redemption rate at certain times.

Full disclosure: I currently don't have any miles on UA MP so I'm aware of UA ditching award charts mostly from the blogs. I'm not quite sure how much of an issue the above is in practice as of today.

beachmouse

If you want a reasonably good item of the tax and fee breakdown of any route, try looking at the fare line by line on a couple different flight options from an ITA Matrix search.

moondog

My UA balance is also currently zero, so my knowledge is limited to what I glean from FT and blogs. That having been said, my understanding is that partner awards are still based on the most recent published award chart (this is how DL handled it, and UA copied DL). Furthermore, as long as the partner offers award availability, UA miles can snag it (i.e. no different from SQ miles in this respect).