Ticket Surcharges

[Prawn2king4]

I have just purchased a round trip ticket from BA (Beijing/LHR).

On the breakdown of additional charges I note the following:

Fuel surcharge: 115 pounds
Insurance and Security surcharge: 5 pounds

Does anyone know what the insurance/security charge for and is the fuel surcharge compatible with other carriers?

And, finally, I have been charged another 20 pounds for the privilege of reserving a seat one way (presumably it will be 40 pounds both ways). I know Singapore Air does not charge a fee for this online service, but not sure regarding other carriers.

Asking out of interest, but any replies will influence my next purchase!

Thanks

[Thunderbug]

P

The seat reservation fee is only charged if you want to reserve your seat earlier than 24hrs before flying, i.e. you want to guarantee a particular seat. Online check-in is free and opens to ALL passengers 24hrs prior to departure.

According to this Air China (http://www.airchina.jp/en/jp/surcharge.html) their fuel surcharge is 75GBP eastbound & 950CNY westbound (so approx £164 for your return flight)

According to BA.com (http://www.britishairways.com/travel/ba6.jsp/seccharge/public/en_gb) British Airways applies a passenger surcharge on all flights to cover insurance and security. This surcharge applies to all passengers including children and infants on both international and domestic flights

Air China just says they reserve the right to charge fees as appropriate and as imposed on them by airports & authorities


Hope that helps and have a good flight

T'Bug :ok:

[Prawn2king4]

Thanks, TB.

[Prawn2king4]

I asked a question regarding BA charges on this site the other day and received a considered reply.

However, now I’m in the mood, I got to pondering the other charges on my air ticket:

Airport Passenger duty (from UK): 80 pounds

Passenger servce charge: 15 pounds

BAA’s web site state that there are an average of 180,600 passengers per day use Heathrow.

This means a total of 14 million pounds/day for Passenger duty and 2,7 million for passenger service charge. The APD goes to to government – very nice.

I assume the PSC goes to BAA – this works out to a touch under 989 million per year…..not bad for a business that’s reluctant to invest too much for snow clearance facilities.

As an aside, Beijing (Peking) airport charges a flat rate of 9 pounds/day for allk pax.

[Rollingthunder]

Yes, runaway robbery.

[Thunderbug]

Prawn

It is precisely these charges that are making BMI look again at their domestic routes. GLA is going. BFS is being reduced. BAA Heathrow have just upped the domestic service charge to be the same as for European flights. Then add a bit of APD and suddenly the whole thing becomes financially unviable.

Also add the longhaul passengers who instead of routing via LHR decide to pay a lower APD and go via AMS, FRA, CDG etc.

It is good to see some of the regional MPs starting to whine about route closures. Maybe that will put some pressure on the government to review policy. It is after all a bit difficult to build a High speed railway to Ulster! :cool:

Check these comments from the boss of IATA with regard to UK aviation policy... Skyport Newspaper (http://www.skyport-heathrow.co.uk/2011/02/iata-boss-calls-for-better-bri.html)

T'Bug :ok:

[ExXB]

T'Bug.

That little guy is with IATA, not ICAO. And he really wouldn't know, he's never paid for a ticket in his life.

[Thunderbug]

ExxB

Humble apologies -Amended!

[Peter47]

I beliieve that some charges such as landing fees were reclassified as surcharges by airlines a few years ago as no commission was paid to travel agents. It also meant that they started receiving serious sums for passengers cashing in frequent flyer miles.

In my experience as surcharges have increased the basic fare has dropped so that it could be as low as £5 for a legacy airline between LHR and AMS. OK more passengers include the weight of an aircraft, but fuel is a largely a fixed cost so airlines will make much more than this amount by selling an extra seat.

If we move to per departure air passenger duty presumably airlines will have to include it in the basic fare. Well possibly...

[Hartington]

P47 the reason why airport fees were taken out of the fare and shown separately are more complex than simply not wanting to pay commission. Actually, I believe that the non-payment of commission was a result rather than a reason.

I think the real driver was the ending of duty free inside the EU. The airlines believed (BA in particular) that the airports were making a lot of their income from duty free sales. The airlines were scared that the loss of that revenue would cause the airports to increase their fees which would force the airlines to raise their fares to cover the additional airport charges. So, in a bid to keep their fares low(er) the airlines extracted the airport fees to show them separately.

Caused some problems in the industry forums because the desire to show the fees in what had always been the "Tax" box on the ticket caused a lot of discussion and led to the remaining of that box taxes/fees/charges.