Airline collecting governmant tax

TerryLondon

I booked 2 flights to New York in November last year, through American Airlines as they were the cheepest at the time of boooking. As we are travelling at the end of this month, they are now saying we have to pay them the extra tax.

While I know this is the governments decision to change the rates,
what has annoyed me is that when we booked the 2 flights cost £494.80 and with the extra tax they will now be £574.80.
BUT if i booked the identical flights now they cost £537.60.
How are they getting away with doing that.???

(Also, why if the tax has doubled to £40. DOes that not mean that £20 was already paid at time of booking? So why are they saying that you you need to pay £40 are they not then taking half of it twice. Or have I got the wrong end of the stick)

Any help appriciated

richardw

TerryLondon wrote:

I booked 2 flights to New York in November last year, through American Airlines as they were the cheepest at the time of boooking.

Airlines put fares up and down like a yo-yo, I don't think this will change.

The exchange rate should be in your favour, so that is the upside.

androobe

For 2 tickets you should be asked to pay £40 extra (£20 each), remember you only pay the extra for the flight LEAVING the UK, not coming back. If they are asking for more, ask them why?

ManAtHome

Unless they're Business or First Class - duty on these has gone up from £40 to £80 per person (unlikely given the price, but AA might have upgraded you or more likely hit the wrong button..)

SavinginUnison

I bought four adult tickets from Gatwick to Orlando for myself, DH and 2 teenage D's and having fixed dates that we could travel the tickets cost us over £1000 each. This is a huge amount to us but we have to go there on those dates so we had to pay the price. I booked them on the day that the tickets came out last April for travel this March. Then in Dec Gordon Brown decided that he wanted to introduce an extra tax on airline tickets - all well and good, but I paid in full for my tickets last April. How can it be legal to introduce a new tax and then backdate it to include all tickets already purchased? For once it is not all the airlines fault although I wish now that I had booked BA and not Virgin! If this goes unchallenged it could be the thin edge of the wedge - what next introducing new taxes on new cars backdated by twelve months, new taxes on food that we have bought but haven't eaten yet? New Labour? New ways of squeezing every last drop out you.

pennylane99

SavinginUnison wrote:

For once it is not all the airlines fault although I wish now that I had booked BA and not Virgin! If this goes unchallenged it could be the thin edge of the wedge - what next introducing new taxes on new cars backdated by twelve months, new taxes on food that we have bought but haven't eaten yet? New Labour? New ways of squeezing every last drop out you.

wish you booked BA?...you could be hit with BA's new pay for extra suitcase rules instead....;)

£240 extra for a long haul flight if your bag is over the weight limit...
also if you have 2 bags, but combined are under the weight limit...you will still be charged.

TerryLondon

androobe wrote:

For 2 tickets you should be asked to pay £40 extra (£20 each), remember you only pay the extra for the flight LEAVING the UK, not coming back. If they are asking for more, ask them why?

Thanks now phoned AA and cleared it up.. think it was just bad wording on there email...

Flights now are roughly th same price so not bothering me as much now..

alanrowell

pennylane99 wrote:

wish you booked BA?...you could be hit with BA's new pay for extra suitcase rules instead....;)

£240 extra for a long haul flight if your bag is over the weight limit...
also if you have 2 bags, but combined are under the weight limit...you will still be charged.

Except that for flights to the US (and several other places) the 2 checked bag rule stays. I wish people would read more than the headline as EVERYBODY has missed the major change to BA's checked luggage - and that's the REDUCTION in allowance to 23kg from 32kg

ManAtHome

alanrowell wrote:

that's the REDUCTION in allowance to 23kg from 32kg

23kg - suspicious number, designed to look like no change if you just glance at it?

alanrowell

ManAtHome wrote:

23kg - suspicious number, designed to look like no change if you just glance at it?

It's what many airlines - AA, UA, AF, Air NZ, AF, VA - already use for their Cattle Class folk. BA is one of the last to catch up.

Apart from the weight change the only people who are going to be affected are people flying long haul in Economy (except to parts of the Americas & Nigeria) where a 32kg weight allowance (any number of bags) is replaced by 23kg (one bag).

More people are going to be hit by excess baggage weight charges than by extra bag charges.

At worst it means you buy a slightly bigger bag from Costco or TK Maxx & stuff all your other bags in it though as you are losing 20lbs of luggage allowance (40lbs for the US) perhaps some new ultra lightweight luggage is called for