steven b

Just booked a roundtrip SEA-CDG-SEA Club (Business) Class Award on BA

Taxes and (mainly) surcharges came out to $791.66!

This is the cost of a "free" ticket..

It took me a long time to save up the 100,000 miles and now I feel cheated.

Steven B

dago

WOW! Thats a lot. I just did the same but taxes were 200. and 60 k miles
mia -cdg mad, cdg txl mia

GUWonder

I often seem to find BA awards that are more expensive than simply buying a ticket. A BA part-cash-part-miles booking often results in BA making more money off the customer at the time of booking than BA would get for selling a regular ticket for travel between the same city pairs.

A couple of days ago I ran into this bizarre one too: a BA-miles-only ticket for LHR-MIA on BA had BA charging customers more money than for a BA-miles-only ticket for LHR-PHL-MIA on BA and AA. It made no sense unless MIA charges substantially more for international-arriving passengers than PHL does for international-arriving passengers and transiting on to a domestic location.

GUWonder

DL has gotten in on the action, but even more extremely than BA:

SkyMiles Award Tix Taxes/Fees *More* Than Buying Ticket From DL

beofotch

Bump

Guava

On the other hand, I wish to report a shocking anomaly in the other extreme:

OZ : JFK-ICN-HKG First Class, but tax bill = £12

Did BD decide they aren't going to collect fuel surcharges on certain partner airlines or something? I knew OZ had lower YQ and like I explained a bit earlier in this thread, it can be a good alternative to NH or SQ in order to lower the surcharges due on your award redemption. Boy, when I said "lower", I mean more like half off, not £12! This redemption almost seems like a time capsule of sort, I never imagined being able to see that again in 2008.

Also, I wish to reconfirm my report from 3 months ago here in this thread re:

This is still working. I just included two transcontinental flights, including one with UA p.s. service + 2 shorter flights all in First/Business for a total of 4 flights. I paid strictly for government taxes & airport charges only, which amount to £49. Keep in mind this actually included $20 of YUL airport fee, $17 of Canadian security charge and about $20 of US immigration charges and of course, the redemption was considered a "one-way booking", so only £75 of cash + 11,250 miles + £49 of taxes even though it included First class.

Is it just me or are BD redemptions worthwhile again?

stimpy

I just booked a short EU trip with BA for 9000 miles and fuel surcharges/taxes came to €250.

Meanwhile a LHR-LAX-LHR UA trip in first class using miles cost $171. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Kiwi Flyer

Some airlines' FFPs collect surcharge even for flights they do not operate, while others do not. It has been that way since fuel surcharges were introduced.

Tclin

OZ award redemption has always good value on Aeroplan as well. Especially, Intra-Asia award (Y/C/F) is steal.

beaubo

I was psyched about taking advantage of the 50% BA award sale.

Then, I started getting tax quotes of between $700-$900 for flying in Business Class and it deflated my enthusiasm

I guess the surcharges for premium cabin travel via LHR is part of the culprit. But still.....sheeeesh!

Explore

To this outrage we will soon be able to add the doubling of the UK air passenger duty, a per-passenger "carbon tax" that actually goes to general government revenue. It will soon cost around $260 in phony carbon tax alone to leave the UK in business or first class on a long flight, according to an announcement from the UK Government yesterday. Airline trade groups plan to sue.

MIKESILV

I guess I should feel extremely fortunate in term of taxes/fuel charges.

I just redeemed two Oneworld (230F) awards:
TPA/MIA/LHR(on AA)/NRT/PEK(on JAL)/HKG/YYZ(on CX) ORD/TPA (on AA)all in F, with the exception of the NRT/PEK leg which is in C.
With stopovers at NRT, PEK, HKG yet the taxes for each ticket only came up to $98.00 each

mike

Mountain Man

I'd like to second beaubo's deflated enthusiasm. It's been a while since I redeemed any miles on BA (I switched to UA once BA reduced mileage to 25% on discounted economy, but still have about 175k miles from the days when I used to fly BA more regularly).

I was excited to receive the 50% off email from BA, but that quickly turned to disillusionment once I saw the huge surcharges that BA adds to award tickets. I was looking at 6 economy tickets from LHR-DEN for a family ski holiday in February. Each ticket gets slammed with €338 in charges (I'm working in Europe, so BA.com prices the taxes and surcharges in €). So that's 150k miles plus €2028 (or £1715) for 6 award tickets. When I price exactly the same trip on BA on Orbitz, it comes out at $597 all-in per ticket, for a total of $3582 (or £2336). So the difference betwen a so-called award ticket and a fully paid ticket in economy is only £104 - it seems absurd.

I realize that most people posting on FT use miles for C or F award seats, and in these cases paying £200-£300 charges is less of a burden (relatively speaking). I would love to do that! But with 4 kids I tend to use my miles for long-haul family holidays. It seems that BA's practice of adding surcharges to award tickets means that using miles for Y tickets no longer makes much sense. Just by way of contrast, this summer I was able to travel with wife + 4 kids from LHR to Hawaii (with a stopover en route in SFO) on UA, for 50k miles per person and fees/surcharges of £60 per ticket!

I was not aware of the big discrepancies between US and European carriers in terms of adding fuel surcharges to award tickets, but having read most of this thread I'm doubly glad I switched all my transatlantic travel to UA 2-3 years ago.

Brendan

OTOH if U use BA miles to fly AA within the USA, U pay only $2.50 per flight 9/11 Security Fee & no short-notice ticketing fee! Try it--ask for next week BOS--LAX & return: 25K miles in Y + $5 if nonstop both ways. Of course, no half-price miles in that case.

Randy Petersen

This is one of those times when maybe it is good that we can't sue our AA miles for trans-atlantic redemption on BA.

With BA talks in line with Qantas, this does not bode well for best (or highest) program rules win.

That or we better hope that OpenSkies works out real well so that we can fly BA-type airline to other parts of Europe than LHR from the states.