Exorbitant airport taxes through London Heathrow

Hi Lexy. Just to clarify - I don't believe these are 'taxes'. This is simply a charge that BA chooses to add when using FF miles. As far as I know, BA is the only airline that does this, and to me, this is a frustrating negative of AA miles / One World alliance. The only way around that I know of is to find an itinerary that avoids BA flights. If you have been searching online, you could try calling AA to see if the agent can find anything else, but that tends to be very hit or miss and time consuming. Enjoy your trip!

In round figures, the actual taxes & airport fees etc on a SFO-LHR-ATH routing are just over $190. The fees relating to the USA part are around $67, not much different from the UK at around $71. The USA figure assumes a direct flight to LHR - add typically $4.50 for additional connections. The tax related to Greece is just under $55. So $122 is 'unavoidable' for USA->Greece - the other will vary according to transit country. Anything on top is for the airline.

I found an Agean air flight from Milan to Athens for about 60E for a thursday flight in late May. If you go to www.flylc.com and put in your to/from cities, and then click on the bar below these boxes, and scroll down you can find itif you don't, only 1 or 2 regional airline shows up, and, while inexpensive, didn't meet my needs this time. As an editorial comment, I scored 2 UA tickets going to MAN return from ATH for a total of 120,000 points and a cost of $180, leaving in May returning in June. Also, I never fly through Heathrow because of the costs and congestion, and why I avoid AA and it's FF program, and even with it's flaws, the UA/Con program has served us well.
Best of luck!

Look on the bright side. $300 per person is better than $1200+ per person. We paid $100 each per person on UA flying from SFO to FRA.

Thank you all for the generosity of your responses. Having flown with AA for over 30 years, I have a ton of miles so we always take vacations with these miles and treat ourselves to business class tickets overseas. It's that "golden handcuff" that keeps me with them. I've looked again at Milan would need to stay over night there and have finally settled on an itinerary that includes AA into LHR and again out for only $577 plus a night in LHR. I guess I just had the belief that FF miles should not come with such a hefty add-on price. But then business class to Athens from the west coast of California would be $3900 (Icelandic) to $8600 (AA). I will stop complaining now! thanks again.

Lexy - This is not a very good place to get quality, comprehensive, detailed answers on the in and outs (and the gotchas) of the best way to get your full value out of your FF miles. It's too detailed and arcane a subject to cover here. You will get half-truths and semi-accurate info here, despite the good intentions of posters. For the full skinny, get on over to fltertalk.com. Not a knock on people here, it's just not this place's specialty. Go to someplace where it is.

I agree! FlyerTalk is filled with people who make a game out of using FF miles and might have some tricks, most not useful to regular folks.

Hmmm......surely there are a fair number of Helpline posters than can offer quality advice as to use of frequent flyer miles.

We also use FF miles with AA and found that any of the BA flights tack on a fuel surcharge. When we don't schedule using AA FF miles there are a lot more flights that are solely on AA. It seems that they route the FF users onto BA, not sure why. You might start looking at 330 days prior to a tentative travel date since that's when the flights are first bookable, choices are more numerous, and the FF seats go quickly. We really don't like booking that far ahead since we are seniors (heck, we really don't like to buy green bananas :-) but you might try earlier booking to avoid routing on BA. The transatlantic legs are the most costly on BA and the surcharge. We have to use BA from Rome to LHR and spend the night on a return trip, even though we are routed nonstop from Dallas to Rome. There are in fact nonstop flights from Rome back to Dallas but none are available for FF users. BTW, we just switched credit cards to the Chase cards with United Airlines to garner FF miles with United.

My husband and I have flown BA from Los Angeles to Heathrow, four years in a row. We use our frequent flyer miles, through American airlines. We have always been offered a choice of going AA or BA. I know the surcharges are high, but BA is far more comfortable and has great customer service. We go business class and like the reclining beds on BA, better than on AA. We also have been able to go non-stop to Heathrow. With AA, we were gong to have to stop in the U.S. on the way to and from London.

Lexy, I was in the same situation trying to find 5 tickets for San Francisco to Venice for this summer using American miles. I would recommend calling American to check flights and ask them to search for you and avoid BA flights through London. They will be able to check all the OneWorld carriers that don't show up on their website - like Air Berlin, Tahiti Nui, or Iberia. They will charge you $25 per ticket if you book with them, but you may find it worth it to save on taxes. I did, especially for 5 tickets. When will you be traveling, and how many tickets do you need? I was concerned about getting 5 tickets on the same flights, so I literally called them everyday starting 330 days prior to the date I wanted to fly. My persistence paid off and I was able to book us on Iberia through Madrid to Venice. Feel free to PM me if you want to discuss further.