High taxes and charges

[chuckee]

Hi,
having saved up a few hundred thousand frequent flyer points over the years, I have finally just used them to obtain 2 round-the-world tickets, at 140,000 points each.
I was rather surprised to see that I had to pay NZ$1,132 in "fees/taxes/charges" for the 2 tickets.

I remember a few years ago when these taxes and charges were ramped up that the excuse for doing so was because of the high cost of fuel (which didn't even sound like a legitimate excuse anyway).
Now, it seems that these charges are higher than ever, and Qantas frequent flyer points are worth less than ever.

Oh well, I guess I'll be shaving over a grand off my holiday's budget.

 

[Mal]

Welcome.

Yeah, taxes and charges (a lot of them being charges) are pretty high for International redemptions. The Fuel Surcharge is still alive and kicking for International tickets.

Are you able to give a list of the cities you are visiting so that I can comment further on the charges? In particular if you are stopping over at Heathrow, then the departure tax is very nasty.

If you are doing that several times, then that adds huge amounts to the taxes component. I note the 140K points used, so assume it's an Economy ticket - (eg it is currently 55 pounds for journies longer than 6000 miles, rising to 85 pounds in November this year, currently 50 pounds for journies 4001-6000 miles - rising to 80 pounds in Nov etc).

Still, the fuel surcharges will probably make up at least 40% of all taxes and surcharges on the tickets. One does wonder how long this situation will continue.

 

[anat0l]

Hi,
having saved up a few hundred thousand frequent flyer points over the years, I have finally just used them to obtain 2 round-the-world tickets, at 140,000 points each.
I was rather surprised to see that I had to pay NZ$1,132 in "fees/taxes/charges" for the 2 tickets.

I remember a few years ago when these taxes and charges were ramped up that the excuse for doing so was because of the high cost of fuel (which didn't even sound like a legitimate excuse anyway).
Now, it seems that these charges are higher than ever, and Qantas frequent flyer points are worth less than ever.

Oh well, I guess I'll be shaving over a grand off my holiday's budget.

At the current rate of exchange, NZD 1132 gives AUD 886.87. If that's for two tickets, then half that is a pretty good all-up for all your fees, taxes and charges IMHO!

Depending on how you're ticketed up (airline and routing), I'm not sure you might have been able to reduce your fees/taxes/charges any lower, but I still think you did pretty well indeed.

With the fuel fines of yesteryear++, you would probably expect to pay at least double of what you have quoted IMO.

 

[dajop]

At the current rate of exchange, NZD 1132 gives AUD 886.87. If that's for two tickets, then half that is a pretty good all-up for all your fees, taxes and charges IMHO!.

Yes 443 AUD per passenger is pretty good for a RTW.

Last year when I did one it was about 660AUD in +++'s for one, and as I am located in SIN and commenced my journey in Malaysia, they wanted initially to ticket me out of Singapore and was looking at 800 AUD for same itinerary (I convinced them to ticket in Australia though on my Australian CC).

 

[SimonM]

I recently canceled my March RTW which involved LHR and rebooked for September, skipping LHR. The fees went down from 658.17 to 339.61.

There's a lot of other changes too, but more flights yet less fees.

 

[Travel Guru]

A$443 per ticket in taxes isn't just pretty good, it's damn cheap.

When the fuel surcharges were at their highest, taxes on round world fares were almost triple that figure, so I certainly wouldnt be complaining paying 443 for taxes.

TG