Football Fan

Something I was wondering - when I book an award for a hotel stay, e.g. with Hilton Honors points, everything is covered - taxes, fees, etc.

When I book an award with LH, however, sometimes, fees seem to be very high.

Case in point - I was looking at an award from MUC to SKG. It is actually available, but taxes/fees are € 112. For that kind of money, I might just get the roundtrip flight on another carrier almost, but without having to spend any miles.

What is contained in all these charges? This is very intransparent for the consumer - not possible to understand what is behind this, since LH does not break it down.

Not only that, but when I try to book the same award in business class, suddenly, charges are € 6 higher, so it comes to € 118? Seems arbitrary to me.

Does anybody have any explanation for this?

Thanks.

oliver2002

MUC to SKG is only possible via VIE using OS. VIE and MUC have horrendously high Airport taxes, hence the high tax charge.

MUC-FRA-MUC has taxes of 66 EUR, MUC-DEL-MUC only 32 EUR and MUC-ARN-MUC 51 EUR.

LH has complained bitterly about the airport charges it has to bear (or rather pass on to customers ) Compare the airport charges at FRA and Hahn and you will see.

jreichel

At first sight, the reason for this is pretty clear: if you look at a paid ticket you will find the actual fare in the fare box and a zillion taxes and fees in the various tax fields. Contrary to common belief many more taxes than just three can be found in a ticket. If the third tax box contains the code XT that amount is broken up into many sub-taxes in the fare calculation line, but that's a different story. The airlines' point is that when using an award ticket while the fare is 0 all the taxes and fees have to be paid because they are out of the airlines control. Sounds logical, huh?

The other side of the story is why taxes and fees are shown separately at all. It has not always been like this. I still remember the outcry when the "Fummel-Fünfer" (some sort of security surcharge) was introduced many years ago. All LH tickets suddenly contained a tax like 6.50DE covering the cost of screening passengers before departure. People found that outrageous.

Of course, the ticket price has always also included airport fees and such, but those were not shown separately on the ticket. Why should they? Who cares? They are operating costs like buying fuel, newspapers, food or paying the FAs and pilots. No other industry breaks up their prices into the prices charged by their various suppliers.

The reason for more and more fees being moved from the ticket price into a separate tax box is simple: back in the good old days when travel agents received a commission from LH that commission was calculated as a percentage of the fare, EXCLUDING taxes and fees. So, if a ticket used to cost 200 DM plus 6.50 DM tax, the travel agent commission was 10 DM. After moving 20 DM worth of fees from the fare box into the tax box the total for the passenger was still 206.50 DM, but LH had to pay only 9 DM commission to the agent. Pretty smart! It may sound like nothing, but over the years this practice has saved LH alone hundreds of millions in travel agent commissions.

While there is nothing one can do about it I think the original poster's question is more than legitimate. Charging all these taxes and fees on a "free" ticket pretty much erodes the meaning of "free". Nowadays, the taxes even include the infamous fuel surcharge, which really makes you pay for something the airline is claiming to give to you for free...

oliver2002

Believe me, you want to have all the taxes detailled in your ticket when travelling countries where the airport insists on collecting their charges personally from you. In India, you always had to carry cash to pay taxes on the spot. Then they allowed the airlines to charge/collect the taxes in advance, but the taxes had to be shown on the coupon in the cryptic line. Now China still collects their airport taxes in cash on the spot before security.

Every industry pays commission on turnover before local taxes and goverment fees.

jreichel

I was not talking about government-imposed taxes which are e.g. targeted at a person entering or leaving a country. If India or China feel they have to collect a departure tax from each passenger then so be it. Such a tax belongs into the tax box and is of course non-commissionable.

My example was aiming at fees that are not imposed by a foreign government but by an airport. If for example FRA charges LH a certain amount for each passenger aboard a landing flight why shouldn't that be free to a passenger traveling on a free ticket? And why shouldn't it be commissionable when traveling on a paid ticket? Same for the fuel surcharge. If you traveled on a free ticket a few weeks ago, fuel was of course free to you. Now, "most of the fuel" is free when traveling on an award ticket, but not all. Where's the logic here? I just don't see the difference between buying newspapers to be distributed on board and paying for using a runway. Both are normal operating costs in my view.

oliver2002

OS has adjusted it fuel surcharge downward.

All details can be found here:

http://www.aua.com/at/eng/Flights/Tips/Tax/default.htm

derpelikan

there is no fee taken , all airport taxes are now in the tickets includet. it changed last november if i remember right.

dp

Hammer

_Thats_ the main question... not the question if airport fees are avoidable by LH or not. Why can the hotel chains pay the taxes for you (they also have to pay taxes, right?) and the airlines can not? Looks a bit cheap to me!

Threy

I think the question, if LH can avoid airport fees or taxes is useless, it is simply ridicolous what they charge you in fees imposed by them, only by them and no ne else.

If I fly through MUC or VIE I am more than happy to pay a few € more, cause I get a nice terminal and no crappy 60/70/80`s mix of something that is called a terminal...

In the case of hotel award stays, the chain normally pays an amount of € 20-50 per award night, so I guess the whole accounting process would be more expensive in comparison to just cover the VAT and be happy...

Knut34

The airport tax is not a tax. Governments collect taxes, airports have revenues from fees.

I agree with Oliver 2002. Any of you who have connected through Sao Paulo or Rio most likely experienced that your ticket was checked wether you paid the fee for connecting there. It seems that not all tickets are issued including connecting fees. When possible I carry a printout from the travel agency that lists all fees.

It is not the government that wants to collect money. The airline needs to make sure that all PAX paid the fee or it will end up paying it.

paulusst

If I remeber correctly LH introduced a "security surcharge" of USD 8 per segment after 9/11. This goes directly to LH and not to any government/airport etc. So if you have a connecting award flight it is USD 32 for LH. So much for a free flight.

Does anyone remeber when DM 100+ in taxes for a flight to the US seemed outrageous compared to Asian destinations? Not too long ago ...

f0zzyNUE

what about fares that state 100% cancellation fee ... does the cancellation fee also include the surcharges ???
for example i buy a ticket for 100€ with an additional 120€ of taxes/fees/surcharges ... if i cancel it - will i get back the 120€???

CHris

stargold

You will theoretically receive back most, if not all, of the extra charges and taxes when you cancel your ticket. In practice however, some have found it difficult depending on airline such as KLM. But in most cases, the taxes and surcharges are refundable.

Zorro

I was told by LH in Kuala Lumpur that taxes would only be refunded by the issuing ticket agent. If that was a LH office it would be subject to a € 50 handling fee.

Jan@BRU

reverting to the initial question, there is still something that strikes me:

MUC-SKG-MUC direct routing on Aegean or Olympic will indeed give you a paid ticket price in the neighbourhood of 170-200€ incl taxes. Taxes actually amount to €29.35 on this routing:

Tax:German Passenger Service Charge €10.85
Tax:German Airport Security Tax €6.50
Tax:Greek Airport Development Charge €12.00

The Miles&More routing through VIE on OS has taxes of €73.95:

Tax:German Passenger Service Charge €10.85
Tax:German Airport Security Tax €6.50
Tax:Greek Airport Development Charge €12.00
Tax:Austrian Passenger Security Charge €16.00
Tax:Austrian Passenger Service Charge €28.34

While I agree that €75 is still a lot compared to the paid ticket fare, I can't see where the €112 are coming from.