HELP - Additional Charges for Air Passenger Duty

caseya

HELP!

I have just received the following email from Opodo who I booked my flights to Florida with last October!

We would like to take this opportunity to update you on the changes that have been made to the APD (Air Passenger Duty).

Following Her Majesty's Treasury's recent decision to double UK APD tax (GB tax) for passengers departing UK airports from 1st February 2007.

In reference to your flight booking, we can advise you that you are required to pay the additional surcharges. Please see below how this payment needs to be made:

Surely for flights already booked and paid for this is a damn cheek to ask for what would cost an extra £160! Is there anything we can do - Martin?

Hotspur

I think you will find that as it is a government tax increase you will have to pay. There is usually small print that allows for these increases to be passed on.
Dear old Gordon has raised it from £5 to £10 for short haul in the name of the environment. It's not going to stop anyone travelling so it is just another tax increase.

caseya

Well I have checked out the T&Cs of Opodo and the only thing I can find is Taxes fluctuate in line with exchange rates. The confirmation email I have states Prices shown include all flight taxes Prices are not guaranteed until purchased. Well I purchased them on 1 October 2006, so surely as the airlines knew about this a long time ago and they should have included this in the initial quote. I still think there is a case to fight here, especially if there is enough of us.

Miss_Bliss

I've been investigating this tonight aswell for a package to Mexico in April, which I booked in October and just paid for in full yesterday. Searching the web, it seems many airlines and travel companies can vary. That is, BA is asbsorbing the cost, First Choice isn't adding the cost.
Having worked in Travel previously for ten years, I thought if you booked and paid for it they cannot change the price, or else you can get a refund. However, the rule seems to be that you can cancel but would be subject to cancellation conditions, i.e. losing part of what you've paid.

I don't see they can do this on flights already booked. I think there will be a lot of fuss and hopefully more companies will follow BA and first Choice! Some are charging it on flight only bookings, but not on packages.

oh... but I can't find an answer from 3 phone calls on mine. It's definitely a cheek when you've already booked and paid, but I'm not sure there's anything we can do about it.

Does anyone know ?

ManAtHome

The tax was announced in December (so the airlines wouldn't have known in October), and is still a bit dodgy as it can't be ratified by parliament until April (when the budget gets the yes/no.. likely to be a yes as nulab bandits still have a majority). As already mentioned this is just another smash&grab, and "greedy gordon" couldn't really give a t*ss whether it causes any problems for you or the travel companies.

Packages have to absorb the first 2% of increase in the total package price whatever the reason - likely that the extra flight tax will be less than this, so you won't have to cough up.

duckcity

If you go to https://www.justtheflight.co.uk there is a list of airlines that have waived the charge, together with several questions and answers.