We were planning to use frequent flier miles on British Air inApril. The first call I made to BA I was told we would have to pay $150 for taxes, but today the agent said $350 in taxes! We have to buy the last couple thousand miles so all of that would not make it worthwhile to use our miles. Can someone tell me their experience re how much they had to pay? Thanks.
Posted by
Virginia, USA
5847 posts
Julia, Assuming that you are flying to London, $350 in taxes is probably correct. The UK has very high taxes on flights. Go to the BA website and plug in your dates for travel. They will display the price and show the taxes separately. That will give you an idea of cost.
For example, a recent ticket to London that I looked at for February was $553 of which $343 was taxes and $210 was the ticket price.
Last year, I paid about $250 in taxes for a FF ticket ... taxes have gone up since then.
Posted by
Newport Beach, CA, USA
769 posts
tiy may also pay more if you dont have direct flights. I think extra stops cost more - airport tax/fee etc. I think its often best to use or save the miles for those expensive mid summer flights - over 1000$ unless you will lose them. If its only a couple hundred - keep them or upgrade to biz! 200$ is cheap for biz if all you pay is the tax! But my two LA-Zurich or LA-Munich were both about 220-250 range in tax (tickets would have been 1200-econ and 3200-biz) each!
Posted by
Hendersonvlle, NC
486 posts
On BA, taxes are not always taxes but are "fees" imposed by the airline to jack up their phony fare prices. This probably covers "fuel surcharges", "seat maintenance", "port charges", or other phony claims. Look to see what other airlines flying the same route charge in taxes and you will know if you are paying more than "taxes".
Posted by
Seattle, WA, US
519 posts
Julia,
We booked on BA in August using our Alaska Airlines miles for our trip this coming summer. The only fees we paid were about $125 US each for taxes, and our tickets are in business class.
I thought I read somewhere last summer that the taxes flying into London were going way up, but if you were just passing through on a connection, they were significantly cheaper (Others may know more on this, or perhaps I'm just wrong!). We are in that boat as we are connecting at LHR to Amsterdam, and then coming through LHR again on our way home. No stays in London.
Hope this helps!