ticket to australia

[mikkie4]

is it possible to avoid the increased gov passenger tax,by booking and flying from (holland)?.flight to australia via hong kong with cathy pacific £295.00 rtn,tax/airlinefees £508.86 total £813.86,dont mind paying the tax from uk/holland from stansted,any advice would be helpful

[PAXboy]

Yes. Read these two threads in this forum first. Suggest you read them in FULL, as the subject has just been debated in full. :)

http://www.pprune.org/passengers-slf-self-loading-freight/470732-why-indirect-flights-cheaper.html

http://www.pprune.org/passengers-slf-self-loading-freight/470308-apd-government-aviation-policy.html

[Hartington]

Here's another thread to ponder

http://www.pprune.org/passengers-slf-self-loading-freight/471233-flights-via-european-hubs-insurance.html

[mikkie4]

thanks for the info

[Peter47]

You might like to combine it with a short weekend in Amsterdan. I reckon that if you were to stay a night in AMS which is effectively a bona fide stopover you would probably be covered by your insurance if something went wrong. Happy to take advice on this.

I don't know if you could book an open jaw ticket as APD is only payable outbound. (An interesting issue for airlines if a lot of people do this.)

Make sure that your airline doesn't change your booking. I once did a RTW trip on three tickets (RTW Southern Hemisphere), PEX SIN - PER & a cheapo QF fare PER - SYD / MEL - cheaper that way if you are visting Oz & Japan.

As can happen the day on one of my sectors on my PEX fare was changed. Luckily there was enough flexibility on my RTW ticket to cope but I would have been stuck with an APEX ticket. You should be OK with CX out of AMS though.

I've often wondered if an airline like Emirates could get away with selling two tickets with a guarantee that the second would be honoured in case of a delay on the first (an offer of free ibsurance policy covering such an evantuality?) or if that would be seen as blatant tax avoidance.