August 06 - Cathay

62204 Sri Lankan rubies ($620 approx)
CMB - BKK-SYD-LAX-LHR-NRT-HKGx-BKKx-CMB

June 07 re-issue - Cathay

37,030 Yen ($310 dollers approx for new departing cities -DXBx2 MCT x1 -AUH x1 LHR (1 extra) JFK x1

(CMB-BKK flown)
// NRT-LHR-DXB// MCT-AUH-MCT // DXB-LHR-JFK-LAX-SYD-BKK- CMB

July 07 - Cathay

Adding on 5 x AA US/Canadian flights and 4 x Qantas domestic currently quoted $495

Total $1425.00 (with only one additional lost departing city HKGx )

Ticket originally cost around $5,300 + taxes DONE4

Taxes = 26% of cost of ticket

I'm hoping the experts on this board will be able to answer this question for once and for all......

How do the various airlines (as they all seem to work differently) calculate tax on a re-issue do they;

1. Add up all the tax on as it stands on the day of the re-issue (taking into account all new fuel surcharges etc) and then minus the tax you had paid up until that point.

Or


2. Look at any new departing cities and/or flights and just charge for those.

Or

3. Something completely different.

As I mentioned in another thread AA will charge either no tax or ridiculously little for a re-issue (usually because of immense fatigue of all those involved) or the other extreme is Cathay who always seem very diligent but equally always come up with high numbers.

Whenever I ask the airlines their answers just keep a shroud of mystery on the whole process.

My experience with CX is quite mixed - sometimes they charge extra taxes (mainly if adding UK departures since that is the biggest tax by far, or if adding CX sectors where they can easily calculate the extra fuel tax), but most often they don't, and on an occasion where it was clear that the taxes were reducing significantly they wrote off the change fee. But that is as a CX Diamond doing my reissues at HKG airport a couple of hours before I need to take the next flight on the ticket.

How could anybody make sense of situations where tariff departments, not just clueless agents, quote absurd tax amounts and, when challenged, discount that amount significantly and, when challenged again discount the total for a second time. Feels like you are in some end of the world street market dealing with someone wearing an eye patch. This nonsense cannot be explained by anyone.