Cancelling non-refundable flights

CeeJay

I have flights booked with conditions that the ticket is non-refundable and no changes allowed. It has been suggested by a friend that although the fare is non-refundable, the flight company should refund any airport taxes and fuel surcharge.

Does anyone have experience of this at all or is this covered by any legislation please?

highguyuk

Personally, I don't think you stand a chance.

In theory, what do you have to lose to ask?

dixie_dean_2

You can claim the taxes back but probably not the fuel surcharges. Most travel agents don't mention this because its a pain in the !!!!!! to do! Some low cost carriers have t and c that state you can't get the btaxes back, or charge e fee to do this. Whether this is legal or not I dont know.

hjb123

You can always have a go at reclaiming taxes or anything you can - afterall nothing ventured nothing gained!

pentangele

Not exctly what you are looking for but thought I would share this experience...

..booked a budget flight online with virgin-atlantic to shanghai, for myself and a colleaue, booking made on a saturday afernoon. Realised after a few hours that the plans for my colleague would need to change, but saw that the ticket conditions were the usual "non refundable no change" clause, then saw that this applied to the "ticket", and at that time , and still 24 hours later, no e-ticket had been issued - all I had was a booking confirmation.

Anyway I called, explained , cited that I stilll had no ticket and they fully cancelled the booking and refunded the whole amount with no argument at all.

I don't know if this was a particular feature of the weekend, or of virgin, but in the small print it says that tickets can take up to 96 hours to be issued, so thjis seems a useful grace period. I doubt I would have been able to do this had my booking been with expedia or opodo, so it may be a good tip to use these sites for comparison, then book directly with ther airlines.

Claudie

I changed the dates on a non refundable flight....called the airline direct, was as nice as humanly possible explained what had happened and asked if they could help. The agent said they could change the ticket for a £100 fee, I nicely (really nicely) explained that I didn't have £100 available so she waived the fee and changed the tickets :O)

Sometimes I think it is all down to the agent but if you don't ask???

Good luck

CeeJay

Thanks for all the replies. I will certainly be giving it a try and I'll post the results.