Hefty charges fuelling angst

[SeatBackForward]

Hefty charges fuelling angst
High taxes and fees on frequent flyer seats are causing angst among passengers, who have the national carrier foremost in their sights.

When I wrote earlier this month about the high levels of taxes and charges being added to air tickets, it unleashed a barrage of emails from frustrated travellers. Foremost in their sights was our national carrier and the greatest source of angst was being slugged with massive taxes and charges when booking frequent flyer reward seats.

One traveller reported being quoted $437 in taxes and charges on an international frequent flyer seat to Bali with Qantas when he could book a complete airfare for $569 - just $132 more. Another was quoted $479 in taxes and charges for a Qantas frequent flyer seat to Los Angeles and back when he could buy an all-inclusive fare on another airline for $1159

smh.com.au

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AFF gets a mention in this article too!

 

[harvyk]

I'm surprised they didn't find the example mentioned a month or so ago where a QF points booking booked you onto a JQ seat (I think it was for SYD-DPS), and the taxes component of that FF redemption was more than had you simply purchased the seat from JQ.

I'll see if I can dig up the post which had the details

 

[anat0l]

Well, perhaps someone apart from AFFers can start a revolution to outlaw explicit YQ and have it integrated into the base fare (either has the entire base fare or as a Q charge), so that it also cannot be subject to be paid on award tickets.

Yeah, Qantas (and Virgin Australia, for that matter) will probably miss that extra money sorely when they have to stop collecting it on award tickets. Oh well.

Actually, you still have to put a whole swathe of airlines in that mix. MH, SQ... actually virtually every carrier that flies in and out of Australia which is not based in the USA or the Middle East.


Cheaper and cheaper tickets in Y has not helped Y redemptions at all. That's why on AFF virtually no one would advise Y award redemptions in any shape or form, unless the YQ is small or non-existent, or the absolute savings in cash exceed the relative weakness (most commonly for families). The public don't mostly realise this, but then most of the public can't see themselves redeeming for an award in J let alone F (and that is if we don't want to talk about another FF game, which is finding elusive premium award availability, especially if you are not an elite FF member).


Can someone confirm or deny that it is against the law or something like that in America for the USA based airlines to charge YQ / charging it on award tickets? (It doesn't stop other airlines operating to/from the USA from charging YQ on either revenue or award tickets, even if those awards are redeemed from a FFP not belonging to the airline charging the YQ, e.g. BA flights redeemed on an AA award)

 

[ric_melb]

The is the same old story regurgitated again. Obviously when fares in Y are on sale the price may be less than taxes and fuel levies on a reward seat.
So in such a case pick the best value to you. But a friend of mine loves using his points say SYD/MEL and only paying $40. He has the points, so doesn't care. Obviously he is not a true AFF type, when I explained YASA and JASA his eyes glazed over.
These levies etc are annoying, but what people don't seem to appreciate is that for rewards it's a nil sum game.
Say at present it costs 8,000 points SYD/MEL plus $40. If Qantas, or another airline, were to not charge the levy, then the points requirement would go up to 12,000 points. No one may like that, but the profit and loss account would dictate it.

 

[anat0l]

These levies etc are annoying, but what people don't seem to appreciate is that for rewards it's a nil sum game.
Say at present it costs 8,000 points SYD/MEL plus $40. If Qantas, or another airline, were to not charge the levy, then the points requirement would go up to 12,000 points. No one may like that, but the profit and loss account would dictate it.

If YQ were "outlawed", I don't think QF would be that silly to retaliate in such a fashion. They may raise the points levels (albeit at their severe competitive disadvantage at the moment), but to add on what they collect as YQ at the moment at a rate of a point per cent (standard practice for ASAs over the Classic amount) would make most awards, no matter at Y or F, untenable. For example, a Y award SYD/LHR return would end up being something like 204,300 points rather than 128,000 points. Ridiculous.

In the end, outlawing YQ would basically force QF et al. just to swallow it. It would be nice if the Australian regulators enforced the same thing on any carrier which operates a program within Australia (but that's probably impossible unless said carriers have an Australian division). Funny enough, despite the fact that the major USA based carriers have all each swallowed a Chapter 11 each in the last few decades, they have still dished out cheap, near free-flowing available awards with no YQ. I can't exactly say that their profitability is linked to this and whether this is good business or not, but so there.

 

[Warks]

Booked the four of us SYD-AKL-SYD on points and it cost about $750 in "fees, taxes, charges, levies, slush funds, kickbacks, sweeteners, brown envelopes..."
Probably could have got four JQ tickets for $1600 all in so it's not a huge saving. Then again I'm glad we're not on JQ and will be using the SYD F Lounge!

At the time I was worried about getting the seats so I thought I had to grab them. I couldn't see any way of reducing that to zero or near enough using points. Was that only through using ASA?

 

[moa999]

smh version its usual anti-QF self in the comments, including a few flyers who have switched to SQ...

now we wouldnt want to talk about SQ's fuel surcharges!

 

[JohnK]

I know everyone likes to criticise Qantas but let's talk about SQ for a minute.

I have been looking at a one-way economy class redemption on SQ SYD-KUL and the taxes are $281.92! :shock: That is steep but unfortunately a one-way airfare would cost ~$700 if not more.

 

[pauly7]

smh version its usual anti-QF self in the comments, including a few flyers who have switched to SQ...

now we wouldnt want to talk about SQ's fuel surcharges!

That story doesn't sell in Aus unfortunately.