Ryanair's "Taxes, Fees and Charges" (Again!)

[Flyer126]

I was recently browsing Ryanair and easyJet's websites for flights to Malaga from London and was astonished at the differences between what the two airlines quoted as "taxes, fees and charges" (excluding credit/debit card "handling" fees).
Easyjet added a total of £14 for a return trip STN-AGP-STN, under the heading "airport charges and government taxes". As this includes £10 UK Air Passenger Duty, I can only assume that the combined passenger service charges levied by Stansted and Malaga airports is only £4.
Now compare this with Ryanair. It adds £25.91 outbound and £22.23 inbound, a total of £48.14!! How can the two airlines' taxes, charges and fees be so different for the same route? I'd be grateful to anyone who has a clue.
(Oddly, if you take the APD off the outbound Ryanair leg, one has £15.91 for STN-AGP and £22.23 for AGP-STN. Again, this is puzzling given Ryanair's contention that Stansted is such an expensive airport to use etc., etc.)

[PAXboy]

If you search this forum, you will find all the information.

It is has been long understood that what the charges the carriers add bears no relationship to what they are charged - it is simply what they can get away with. Evidence shows that they can get away with a lot!

The pax will, ultimately, look at the bottom line of cost and decide if that is a price worth paying. They know that £/€1 fare will land up being anything from £/€ 25 to 50 and so on.

Thus far, the rules imposed by law have not forced them to spell out the exact make up of these charges. Even if they did - it would not make much mind. The bottom line price is all that is relevant although do not take my view one that this does not matter! I think it reprehensible that sellers are allowed to do this and have pointed out before the way that the AirMiles company do the same.

[old,not bold]

The history of this is relevant....I think..to those of us in the UK....

For 40 years or so, all Local Authority airports in the UK, which until the advent of Mrs T was virtually all public service airports bar BAA ones, charged airlines in accordance with a model agreed between the Airport Operators Committee (AOC) and the airlines. It was designed to, and did, encourage airlines to create new routes and airports to take a part in promoting and developing them. The amounts were decided by each airport, to preserve competition of sorts.

There was a fixed landing fee, calculated in accordance with weight. (The addition of Navigation charges, again by weight, occurred at some point as these things became more expensive and traffic developed needing Radar, Approach etc as well as the bloke in the tower with an Aldis and VHF set.)

And then there was a Passenger Load Supplement, based on the number of people getting off, or, sometimes, on.

The idea was that the Landing fee would just about cover the costs of providing the airfield, fire cover etc etc, while the PLS would add the profits if flights were full, after paying the marginal costs of handling the extra numbers. Thus, the airports became partners of the airlines in developing routes.

These charges were built into the advertised ticket price; there were no add-ons.

(Exeter was the first airport in the UK to offer (to JEA in the 1980's) a single charge based on the number of people, and no landing charge at all. It worked; that's why Flybe's in Exeter.)

And then in the early 1990's, I think it was, BA suddenly announced that they were being made to pay what it called "Taxes" by the airport, as well as the Government tax. With the greatest regret it had to add these to the ticket prices, and "Airport Taxes" were born.

The "Airport Tax" was of course simply the PLS that they had always paid and included in the ticket price.

Other airlines rapidly joined in, of course. Overall, the airlines managed to hike their revenues by 20% or so over what it would have been had they not done this. The travelling public and travel trade fell for it and blamed the airports.

And the airports did nothing about it, because they were afraid of the airlines.

The above is a simplified account! The sale of many airports was going on at around this time, which gave BA and the airlines the window of opportunity to do what they did.

The budget airlines used this system to develop their headline offers at ridiculous prices (1p, etc etc) and we now have the absurd situation of almost every expense of operating the aircraft being charged as an "Airport Tax", "Fuel Supplement", "Boarding Fee", "Credit Card Fee", Booking Fee", "Wheelchair Fee", "Baggage Fee", and so on, while the headline "fare" is a stupidly unrealistic and absolutely meaningless figure.

I'm waiting for "Piloting Charges", "Maintenance Charge", "MOL's Pension Fee", "Aircraft Lease Cost Fee" "Training Charges" sorry, scrub that, the staff pay those already, ......there must be others coming, too.

And Ryanair are still blaming their website for being "unable" to comply with legislation requiring the display of the full fare up-front.

[UniFoxOs]

"Training Charges" sorry, scrub that, the staff pay those already,

What makes you think Ryanair won't charge for these anyway when they realise it is another easy add-on??

UFO

[PAXboy]

Dear Old,not bold,

Thank you for a VERY interesting history lesson. How amusing to learn that the newbies learnt the Airport Taxes trick from the old guard.

I can see that, once govt started imposing Departure taxes and so forth, it was even easier to do - because of the actions of dear old BA.

Yours sincerely,
PAXboy

[Michael SWS]

The most irritating aspect of all these "taxes", charges and surcharges being itemised separately from the fare is that you are required to pay them when redeeming frequent flyer points.

I have 250,000 BA Miles burning a hole in my pocket, but there is absolutely no point in my using 50,000 of them for a "free" flight to New York if I still have to pay £250 of a £350 fare. And availability for Club World is so limited as to be virtually unobtainable. The whole scheme has become little more than a con.

[manintheback]

quote Michael SWS
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have 250,000 BA Miles burning a hole in my pocket ......... for a "free" flight to New York if I still have to pay £250 of a £350 fare. And availability for Club World is so limited as to be virtually unobtainable. The whole scheme has become little more than a con.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You dont say!
There might be a reason my Gold has become a Blue, maybe its the benefits (or complete lack of). Now its best value for money on the route I travel.

[Michael SWS]

I have not used BA since I and my two travelling companions were bumped out of our exit row seats at the gate last December to make way for three off-duty BA staff. Clearly, a silver card meant nothing.

I would not go as far as using a low cost airline, but I have managed to save a small fortune this year by travelling with other full-service airlines on a "best value" basis rather than out of loyalty to a brand. And I've discovered that - guess what - some of these "other" airlines are actually pretty good (as long as you can get past the dreadful check-in and boarding procedures that some of them have).

[VAFFPAX]

Read Air Babylon sometime... you'll be amazed what you learn about what happens behind the scenes. :-)

S.

[Flying_Frisbee]

I'm waiting for "Piloting Charges", "Maintenance Charge", "MOL's Pension Fee", "Aircraft Lease Cost Fee" "Training Charges" sorry, scrub that, the staff pay those already, ......there must be others coming, too.


Or just milking existing charges even more?

Ryanair will trial a “zero bag” policy on flights aimed at business travellers from the autumn – potentially charging passengers more for them.
From October, the no-frills airline will ban checked bags from some flights that have a high number of business travellers in a bid to cut its ground handling costs.


Full article ABTN (http://www.abtn.co.uk/Ryanairs_new_zerobag_policy)

[eastern wiseguy]

Michael SWS

bumped out of our exit row seats at the gate last December to make way for three off-duty BA staff. Clearly, a silver card meant nothing.

That really surprises me. I am not BA staff but have travelled on a sub load basis. I have always been the one who was bumped for a full fare passenger.

[On the Spot]

You think that pax have a problem with charges ! Apparently the situation at Ryanair has become so dire that they are currently trying to shift the responsibility, and cost, of diversions onto the destination airport. Apparently the airport is responsible for the weather amongst other less than well defined situations !

[10DowningSt]

Don't laugh too hard.....

The airport cannot control the weather; but it can control its investment into the equipment needed to enable operations in poor visibility, low cloud etc.

If it fails to do that, it's arguable that it has contributed to the diversion, for example if an aircraft (and crew) equipped for Cat 2 landings is forced to divert from a Cat 1 airport in conditions that would have been OK for Cat 2.

Over-simplified, of course, but you get the drift.

Then again, you can argue that the airline - driven by the commercial case - scheduled the airport into its programme knowing its limitations, and is thus the architect of its own misfortune.