Airport tax comparison - FF flights versus regular fares
 

I suppose this is all down to someone's sense of humour. I was just looking at some holiday flight possibilities. I compared using Lufthansa miles to go to Dublin from Geneva with buying a normal ticket. Using miles means it is free, plus 228 Swiss Francs of taxes and charges. The lowest economy fare is 231 francs, including taxes and charges for exactly the same flights on July 9th and 14th. Somehow I doubt LH really wants to charge me 3 francs plus taxes and charges. The tax and charge fee for the FF points must be making someone a (small) bunch of money. What do you think?

It's very common for airlines to do this. They aren't transparent about the taxes at all. I've tried booking using FF miles with KLM several times, and have often been quoted an extra GBP100 or so in combined taxes to book a return flight compared to the price of the two legs separately.

When I queried this with KLM I was told that was the way taxes work, and couldn't get any further answer out of them. I would love to have a detailed explanation of exactly how tax charges are calculated.

When I try booking online I see a "Swiss Service Fee" in addition to government taxes, airport fees, fuel surchcarge. I wonder if the fee for using miles is even more?

If I understand you correctly you're trying to use LH miles. Are you booking through Swiss or Lufthansa? I've seen airlines charge different values for the same taxes and the "Swiss Service Fee" might not apply if booked via Lufthansa or might be substantially different or might be a Lufthansa fee.

You just have to accept it, carriers do not want you to spend the miles so will come up with tariffs that make it completely useless to do so - as here.

British Airways have the best idea. Unless you do a huge amount of long haul in premium classes, you stick at the Blue level and never accumulate enough to redeem anything, so nothing is in prospect. You see, at least they are honest about it.

Possibly free with miles too
 

LH and Swiss also let you pay the fees and taxes with miles, unlike any other airline as far as I can seen. 15k miles short haul. Not sure if it is possible long haul.

LH and Swiss operate a single FF system, so it makes no difference how you book.

Booked flights to UK for Christmas using AA miles, total taxes were $365, this is for J class flights, i thought this was very good. The only problem for me is coming back i have to go LHR-MAN-JFK and onwards as AA have no morning departures from LHR and BA had no award seats available.

In theory yes. In practice I'm not so sure.

Swiss and Lufthansa are two brands of the same company. However, sometimes each airlines website offers two different prices for the same flight (usually dependent on whether it is an LH or an LX flight number). Presumably this extends to frequent flyer redemption too.

If you book a reward flight through the Swiss website for a flight with a Lufthansa flight number does the ticketing system classify it as a partner reward and add a premium to the price? Possibly as a relic from when the two airlines were seperate companies?

I build up my Lufthansa Miles and wait until the cheapest fare is at least 75% more than the tax to pay if I redeem the miles for a flight. It usually happens that at some time of the year the standard fare for my regular route becomes very expensive such that the tax paid using miles may be half the standard fare - or I need to go somewhere at short notice and the price is simply very high for that reason.

It is surprising though that the tax for a miles flight appears to be a bit more than for a standard fare.