Mistake or madness? Virgin Flying Club adds £200+ to USA Upper Class flight surcharges

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• mark heath says:

  13 Apr13 April 05:53

  Just in time for the new A350 launch?
  Never could of seen this coming.

  • ChrisC says:

    13 Apr13 April 06:01

    Well BAs revenue flights pricing for the A359 flights to Toronto were higher when I looked than the other non 350 flight so perhaps new planes means a premium?.

    It wouldn’t explain these prices though as VS hasn’t scheduled their A350s to individual flights yet plus don’t get theirs for a few more months.

  • Nick says:

    13 Apr13 April 07:46

    Just in time for the new A350 launch?.

    Never could have seen this coming.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      13 Apr13 April 08:04

      There’s 1 plane atm. Hardly the reason for £300 across every route

      • Tom says:

        13 Apr13 April 08:52

        Zero aircraft at the moment. The first aircraft is yet to be delivered and is due to enter service this summer.
        Personally I can’t see this being connected to 350.

• ChrisC says:

  13 Apr13 April 05:55

  It is not taxes it’s surcharges that are the issue here.

  You get it right in the headline so you could have got it right in the article,

  Someone asked yesterday if you might write write something on surcharges one mile at a time wrote a comprehensive piece yesterday. Are they reading your comments? Lol

  • John says:

    13 Apr13 April 06:09

    Exactly, if they were taxes, then clearly the first line of the article is appropriate, because the governments involved must publicly announce taxes, thus unexplained increases are likely to be mistakes.

    As they are surcharges, which are calculated by undisclosed means, it could easily be the case that this is a deliberate increase by VS.

• Radiata says:

  13 Apr13 April 06:04

  Looking at a cash ticket LHR-JFK (out 19/4 back 26/4) “taxes, fees and charges” total £267.52 and, shown separately, carrier imposed surcharges a nice round number. £500.

  I had wondered whether simply the number calculated in USD mistakenly and then shown as GBP but the £500 suggests deliberate.

• Mart says:

  13 Apr13 April 06:08

  Booked Miami a few months ago in upper it was £665 each
  I double checked over the phone

  • Mart says:

    13 Apr13 April 06:10

    The Carrier-imposed Surcharge (YQ) was £400 each

• Paul says:

  13 Apr13 April 06:12

  It’s NOT TAX.
  It’s a rip off fee charged by the carrier, kept by the carrier. Most ex U.K. charges are carrier fees with less than 1/3rd being a tax.

  Please call these charges what the are.

  • Jonah says:

    13 Apr13 April 10:43

    YAWN

    • John says:

      13 Apr13 April 16:13

      Go to bed then

• Jonathan says:

  13 Apr13 April 06:28

  May well be a deliberate move but not intended to target redemptions.

  Most corporate discounts/rebates don’t include YQ in the kickbacks so a sneaky way of reducing effective discount whilst not changing headline rate is to increase carrier charges & reduce fare. Can often see cash fares of less than £10 in economy & £400 in J. The side effect of this is that you also get hammered on redemptions.

  I completely agree it’s a joke that they can continue to lump carrier surcharges in with taxes & fees & get away with portraying them as anything but profiteering.

  • Nigel the Pensioner says:

    13 Apr13 April 06:59

    Its always been a Ryan Air type trick; charges are just a way of increasing the fare. We all know that the fare is 1p each way and the rest is just “charges”! I thought this type of pricing had been made illegal but clearly is not enforced. It needs to be a fully shown fare (including airline and airport security charges etc) with just respective govt taxes added. If you “don’t show” you just get govt taxes back. That’s fair and it’s clear.

    • Callum says:

      14 Apr14 April 01:03

      You just have to show the total price, which Virgin does. Nothing illegal about having a carrier surcharge.

• SydneySwan says:

  13 Apr13 April 06:37

  Surcharges are a ”usage fee” to use your points. Virgin (and many other airlines – BA, Qantas, etc.) are very happy to sell you their points and then when you try to exchange them for a flight they want you to pay again for this privilege. It is an absolutely disgraceful business practice.

• Alex W says:

  13 Apr13 April 06:59

  The government ought to get a grip of this practice and outlaw it.

  • Frenzie01 says:

    13 Apr13 April 07:04

    The government is currently busy with other things.
    When they have lots of free time, I am sure they will start thinking about REWARD FLIGHTS.

    • Alex Sm says:

      13 Apr13 April 07:59

      They admitted that they couldn’t look at drones because they had to deal with Brexit, so I’m a bit sceptical that they would care about reward flights, to be completely honest with you…

      • John says:

        13 Apr13 April 16:17

        The government of Brazil managed to outlaw surcharges.

        The government of Hong Kong, unlike what Rob says, did not outlaw them but merely insisted that a fuel surcharge was just that, i.e. a response to unpredicted high fuel prices and when the oil price dropped they said there was no basis for surcharging on fuel. Strictly speaking HK never outlawed a copay on redemptions.

  • KBuffett says:

    13 Apr13 April 07:19

    I suspect the airlines have too much power so will never be taken to task. Rather like petrol prices.

    • David says:

      13 Apr13 April 08:19

      The difference with petrol prices is that it is all tax. Duty and VAT (which is a tax on a tax) and 4p or 5p a litre profit for the retailer.

    • Callum says:

      14 Apr14 April 01:05

      Airlines don’t have any special “power” – why would you think they do?

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