Any redemptions include taxes+fees?
 

Almost every frequent flier program I am familiar with requires travelers redeeming flight awards to pay taxes and fees in addition to the miles required. For many international flights these taxes and fees can make up a third to half the fare. I guess Delta "pay with miles" allows one to book an award that includes taxes now, albeit not at an especially good rate. Are there any other programs that offer redemptions that include taxes and fees? Thanks.

Using BA miles on AA is pretty close to free.

You can try using Flex Perks to redeem air tickets with no fees or whatever, and you get to earn the mileage as well.


alextktan

Well, airlines like UA & AA offer domestic redemptions where they bill only the "9/11 security fee" so a non-stop roundtrip would be $5.

And some programs like LH offer to let you redeem additional miles to cover taxes.

But IMHO you shouldn't primarily select a program on the basis of lowest cash costs for redemption

- award chart: how many miles does a program require you to spend for a given reward?

- availability: Star carriers, especially other than United, tend to offer the best availability for Europe and Asia. Skyteam tends to offer the worst availability.

- where you want to go, and in what cabin: some programs are pretty good for specific destinations, bad for others, especially in light of the considerations above.

I have no problem shelling out $500 for an SQ F redemption using DL miles, the single best use of DL miles out there, and only available for a few more months...

Qantas has fees, but allows you to pay them using miles.

eg, a short one-way domestic flight is 8,000 miles + taxes/fees/etc, or normally around 14,000 miles with no fees.

I know that taxes on US domestic awards are pretty low; it's international flights where this is an issue.

I am interested only in getting from A to B as cheaply as possible (I'll even take Greyhound or Ryanair), and can usually be pretty flexible about dates, so availability and premium cabins are not of much interest to me. Award chart is important, but for a roundtrip to Europe I'd definitely rather pay 60k miles+$0 than 50k miles+$120, so it seemed worth asking whether the former option existed.

Interesting, but am I correct in understanding that this only works for flights within Europe or Aus/NZ respectively?

Really? How does this work? BA.com won't let me price specific award tickets without a login.

True, but as I can't earn FlexPerks points for miles traveled (only for $ spent) it would take me years to accumulate enough for one flight (unless I start buying dollar coins).

+1

That would not be prudent...:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/13001367-post6983.html

While I agree award taxes & fees should not be the only consideration, it is nonetheless an important one.

Some FFPs' awards do not incur fuel surcharges (typically when redeeming on certain partners' flights), while others have high fuel surcharges on all awards. There are many cases where the mileage amount for an award is of little value because the surcharges are so high.

Misrepresenting a ''fuel surcharge'' as a tax and forcing ff members to pay it to get an award ticket is a big fraud now being perpetrated by many legacy airlines in Europe. The only US-based airline I am aware of that participates in this scam is DL and it only inflicts it upon customers based outside the US.

Avoiding airlines which unethically gouge their customers in this fashion is a key step to getting good value for miles.

Fuel is a basic and necessary part of the service they are providing. Planes will not fly to get you from point A to point B without it. Plus they are putting the money from this charge in their own pockets, not paying it to a government, airport authority or other third party. Airlines should be prohibited by law from engaging in this flim-flam.

Sky Miles Fees and taxes for FF redemption
 

Booked a trip ORD-JFK-SIN-MNL-ORD on Singapore Airlines using Delta Skymiles. The routing is rather extended (really ORD-JFK-FRA-SIN-MNL vv)but based on the time of year, I was glad to get the routing at all for 120,000 miles. (This is a business class redemption)

All is good in the world until they socked me with a $425 tax on the otherwise free ticket. Does that seem unreasonable? Am I being taken for a ride or is this all kosher

I am a Platinum Medallion on Delta so reserving this free via a live person was free. I dont mean to be a cheap *ss, but the $425 is taking away from the beauty of it all. Can I request a breakdown of this fee and challenge?

Any thoughts?

You did a good job.

The fees are, in fact, the same as when using AA miles on AA.

AA charges $100 fee for semi close in flights (not sure what the break points are, but that makes their miles less useful IMO).

I think you are referring to the AAdvantage Award Service Charges, which are $100 only if ticketed 6 days to 2 hours prior to departure.

http://www.aa.com/i18n/AAdvantage/pr...servations.jsp