charging fares for a travelling infant

Milky_Mocha

is this allowed even if the infant is on my lap? Just tried a trip on expedia and they appear to charge

BungleGirl

When I worked in the travel industry - that's about seven years ago it used to be about £15 on a charter shorthaul, £30 on a charter longhaul and 10% of the adult fare on scheduled flights but the infant did't have to pay any taxes on top of that. It was standard then so I assume that it is now but I should imagine that the charter rates have gone up since then.

jasonrat

i think different airlines charge different rates not too sure which ones are cheaper though

Milky_Mocha

i searched for a trip to usa a for 2 adults + 1 infant on my lap (she's 5 months old) it came up wth 223.33 per person the 670 total including all taxes and fees. That looks like full adult fare for all 3 of us - very unfair

Burtie_2

But how much are the same flights for 2 adults?

jasonrat

Milky_Mocha wrote:

i searched for a trip to usa a for 2 adults + 1 infant on my lap (she's 5 months old) it came up wth 223.33 per person the 670 total including all taxes and fees. That looks like full adult fare for all 3 of us - very unfair

it is normal for an extra £100 or so in taxes to be added on fares. i believe it might be something like 30% of adult fare. and i think one travel consultant quoted me 30% of the true adult fare not the discounted ones or different fare basis

davidlizard

We flew to Greece with BA last summer, with our daughter on the lap. She paid about 1/10th of an adult fare, plus a tax element - we paid about £150 each and she paid about £30 IIRC. But she did have a baggage allowance (10kg - not that we used it as we had enough to carry with as it was).

Many package tour operators do the "kids go free" sort of thing. As pointed out above, it no doubt varies from airline to airline, and if relevant, tour operator to tour operator.

BA seem to charge (at least for their cheap seats) infants full whack when they get to two.

mrcow

Milky_Mocha wrote:

i searched for a trip to usa a for 2 adults + 1 infant on my lap (she's 5 months old) it came up wth 223.33 per person the 670 total including all taxes and fees. That looks like full adult fare for all 3 of us - very unfair

That's not it at all.

The adult fair is a lot more (you'll only be paying the infant base price for your daughter of about £60, providing you selected the "in laps" option on the Expedia search page).

The way that Expedia calculate their "per person" rate is to simply divide the rate byt he number of passengers, so this is slightly misleading for people travelling with children.

If you doubt what I'm saying try searching again without the infant. I bet it won't still be £223 per person!

Milky_Mocha

mrcow wrote:

That's not it at all.

The adult fair is a lot more (you'll only be paying the infant base price for your daughter of about £60, providing you selected the "in laps" option on the Expedia search page).

The way that Expedia calculate their "per person" rate is to simply divide the rate byt he number of passengers, so this is slightly misleading for people travelling with children.

If you doubt what I'm saying try searching again without the infant. I bet it won't still be £223 per person!

I SEE, I SEE, I SEE!
WHEN i do the search without infant the total is 524 which means they charged an extra 146 for the infant. Slightly better. thanks for the explanations. I'm still disappointed it ain't free tho LOL.

mrcow

Just make sure that after you book, you call the airline and get skycot seats booked (at the front with more legroom).

Make sure that you use your infant baggage allowance up (standard hand luggage allowance plus buggy) and remember you get to get on the plane before everyone else pushes on.

Milky_Mocha

mrcow wrote:

Just make sure that after you book, you call the airline and get skycot seats booked (at the front with more legroom).

Make sure that you use your infant baggage allowance up (standard hand luggage allowance plus buggy) and remember you get to get on the plane before everyone else pushes on.

thats v useful. Thanks. Nice to be given priority when travelling.

BTW, has anyone been able to do a multi-trip search on the travel supermarket or other flight search engine? so far I've been able todo this on expedia and opodo.