Originally Posted by
Rainboe
If you are selling a plane ticket for 99 pence and other businesses and authorities are going to add another £40 or more to that, I think you have every right to make it quite clear to the customer where all his revenue is actually going, and what he is paying for the honour of being stripped and shouted at it security, and how much he is paying for the honour of being allowed into a BAA shopping centre!
In theory, that would be right.
But take the example of the ticket that the OP was buying: £85 base fare + £305 TFC = £390.
If this were a BA ticket, the airline is pocketing at least the £85 base fare + £218 fuel surcharge + £5 insurance surcharge = £308 out of the £390 (79.0%).
As is well-known and well-publicised - and as predictable as the amount of VAT on a piece of furniture - Robber Brown takes £40 APD (10.3%), taking the total to £348.
The rest is (possibly) going to other businesses - £42 of £390, or 10.8%. (Please excuse the rounding errors.)
So I think that there is a limit to the amount of outrage that the customer can legitimately generate about being "used as a revenue raiser, and not by the seller of the service".