Tax / fee recalculation when adding return flights to voucher bookings

[APL03]

Can a mistake be made in calculating taxes / fees when a return flight is added later to an Avios with voucher booking?

Or is it all done by the computer automatically, so no room for error?

I recently added a return to both a companion voucher, and 2 x upgrade voucher booking from LHR to Tokyo for 4 people.

The one way fees from LHR to Tokyo was originally £302.50 per person in CW and £202.50 per person in PE.

When the agent booked the returns (and helped me massively with the upgrade voucher booking) he said the fees were going to be double the one ways as they were ‘reward flight savers’.

However, when I just checked the e-tickets, the taxes & fees are now listed as ‘taxes & fees’. For the CW seats they are only marginally higher at £616.02 per person so not the end of the world.

But for the PE seats, they are listed at £516.02 per person. So just over £100 more per person than what the agent said they would be.

They haven’t actually charged my card yet as I presume they are in a queue with the back office ticketing team.

Is this something to do with them now not being ‘reward flight savers’ for some reason? (Even though number of miles taken is the same – there has been a lot of bizarre activity on my Avios account with miles being taken, credited, taken again and credited again, way more than the agent said he needed to do.)

Has anyone had this issue before and is it something that can get changed or not?

[NorthernLass]

I’m not sure what’s happened here, but Tokyo is one of those destinations where it’s cheaper to book the inbound separately (lower departure taxes). You’ve added the inbound and your journey is now all on one PNR, this might explain the increase.

You could try pricing up the route as a return and as singles to see if this would explain it.

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

IIRC the Japanese rule about surcharges applies to flights originating in Japan. (same as ex Brazil)

Turning this into a return rather than 2 singles means the flight back home no longer originates in Japan so there is no restriction on what an airline can charge.

[APL03]

NorthernLass wrote:

I’m not sure what’s happened here, but Tokyo is one of those destinations where it’s cheaper to book the inbound separately (lower departure taxes). You’ve added the inbound and your journey is now all on one PNR, this might explain the increase.

You could try pricing up the route as a return and as singles to see if this would explain it.

Thanks for the suggestion. A return in premium at peak time (which mine is) has fees of £405 so something is definitely off.

I couldn’t do the ‘book the one way return leg online & ask for a refund of 50% avios’ trick for the companion voucher seats in CW as I didn’t have enough Avios.

I don’t mind the extra fees in CW as it’s not too much, but £220 more for the PE seats is a lot to swallow for no apparent reason.

They haven’t actually taken the money yet which is the other odd thing! I don’t know if it’s better to call before they do, or wait to see what happens?

[APL03]

Just checked one ways (out of interest as I couldn’t do this for the PE seats either, as I was using the upgrade voucher).
The Tokyo to London fees in PE is £145 so a saving of just under £60 doing two one ways vs the return.

[APL03]

Just thought I’d update this for anyone interested.

Spoke to BA and they said to ignore what the e-ticket says because that’s just their internal calculations on fees and taxes, and not the reward flight saver charge. My credit cards have been charged today with the right return fee amounts, so it was an un-necessary panic!

If I had enough Avios to do the companion voucher CW seats as two bookings and ask for a refund of Avios I would have saved around £250. At least I got flights to Tokyo (a bit earlier than we hoped) but they seem to be like gold dust at the moment (our back up option of Shanghai return had all gone too for our preferred dates…)