easyJet has taken this one up, they issued a press release about it:

Easyjet

Will be interesting to see what happens, and who will ask for the extra pennies in the airport departure lounge come February.

the APD comes into force on 1 February, but as far as most industry figures know the consumer will not pay anything until that date.

the government cannot take a tax from the public prior to its inception date.

the key question is how the airlines will take up the shortfall of the passengers that have booked ahead of 1 feb for flights after that date. it is estimated that the cost to the airlines will be around £80m.

airlines would NOT be able to take an extra tax from passengers at the airport.

beware of urban myths, Rants.

I tried to read about this on Travel Weekly and Travel Trade Gazette for a definitive position. My initial conclusion is that there isn’t a definitive guide. Basically, the treasury is saying that this is a tax on airlines, rather than passengers. Therefore, it is the airlines’ responsibility to come up with this extra tax. I understand that according to the ‘EU directive’ on Package Travel Regulations, If the increase happens to be less than 2% of the booking value, this cannot be passed on to the consumers, which implies that it can be passed on if it is more than 2%!. So, the value of the package is one of the determinants. Then, there are the policy issues adopted by the Airlines, some say that they will absorb this increase themselves as a gesture of goodwill, no doubt others will try to encourage the consumers pay up, although they may not be able to force this. Perhaps Contract Lawyers can advise…??

I don’t quite agree with Kevin. I have just booked a ticket for travel in March 07, and I am being charged the full £80 APD for a BA premium economy ticket - ahead of when the tax is introduced. If you do a test booking on ba.com you’ll see that the taxes will increase if you book a flight leaving after 1 February 2007. However, if you have already booked and paid your ticket the situation becomes more complicated. I seem to remember that BA has said it will absorb the tax for those bookings on the BBC news website - but I can’t find the article anymore.

It’s certainly outrageous. Flight prices have doubled in recent years.

I booked a flight in Sept for a trip in Feb 07, and I received an email from my airline yesterday telling me I now owe an additonal 92 dollars (CDN). They kindly provided a link to their site where I can pay now. I haven’t yet, but I’m assuming it’s not optional.

The 92 is for two people (46 each) flying to Canada out of London. We’ve also got a ryanair flight from London to Dublin booked, but no word from them yet. I guess I should be grateful I found out now and not on the last day of my trip when I ‘d already spent all my money at H&M and in various pubs across England and Ireland!

http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2006/12/exclusive-gordon-brown-in-tax-cock-up.html

the plot thickens.

klm, ed, travo

BA have agreed to cover the costs of the APD increase for passengers who have pre-booked at a cost of £11 million.

see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/12/16/cnba16.xml

Easyjet are now going round expecting travellers to pay the additional costs

Andy

I’ve just had that email from easyjet who it seems are passing the price on to passengers.

No word to say what happens if you don’t pay up by Jan 15th though

sadly their terms and conditions mention about ‘what if taxes rise’ etc and say you have to pay if they pass them on basically

I have booked on the 13th of november 2006 an easyjet roundtrip from Cologne to London for February and another easyjet roundtrip from London to Almeria in the same period. This afternoon I recieved an email from easyjet, which asked me to pay additional taxes on the flight to Almeria.
Do I now get another one for the flight from London to cologne?
Where is a statement of the government to read, that additional taxes should be collected also on bookings before the 6th of december 2006?

I listened to Moneybox on the BBC and their edition broadcast on 16th Dec had an interesting contribution from one Toby Nichol of Easyjet. For some reason the edition is not available to listen to again but this link summarises what he said. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/moneybox/6184581.stm. Here’s the interesting bit though…

Toby Nichol of Easyjet says the airline faces an extra £4.5m tax bill if passengers are not prepared to pay up but making them do so could be difficult.

He hopes passengers will be prepared to pay an extra £5 to cover the tax as a goodwill gesture.

“We will be going back to our customers and saying - the chancellor has doubled air passenger duty - how do you feel about giving us an extra fiver?” he said.

I have a large number of flights beeked between the February and the end of the summer and I have just had the easyjet emails asking me to pay the extra taxes by the 15th of Jan.

Is anyone else waiting until after the 15th to see what happens?

Is there any way they can collect the extra taxes for these flights?

Why did Toby Nichol of Easyjet say -
‘ the airline faces an extra £4.5m tax bill if passengers are not prepared to pay up but making them do so could be difficult’ - if they were definately going to be able to collect the taxes?

Richard

The article on the BBC website is now available to listen to again so you can listen to Toby Nichol. Go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/moneybox/6183161.stm and scroll down to the Airline Tax article. The first part of the article talks about package holidays but then moves on to Flight only scenarios. Also the Telegraph dated 30th Dec had an article on the back of it’s Money supplement saying that until the Tax change was voted through by Parliament there is no legal obligation on the travelling public to pay the tax.

I booked a return Easyject flight to Berlin for March (booked on the 12th October 2006!) and I too have now received the email from Easyjet asking me the extra £5. I have decided not to pay and wait until I get to the airport. I only hope they won’t sell my seat in the meantime and I wouldn’t be surprised if they did. However, I am willing to take the risk as I don’t think it’s fair to charge those passengers who have booked before the increased was introduced. I will only pay at the airport if that is the only way to get on the plane. Unfortunately, I think they will ask their passengers to pay at the airport as I am sure they will be able to take payment over the check-in counter (as they usually do when they charge for extra luggage).

I’m flying with Ryanair in Feb, booked last November and still haven’t heard from Ryanair asking for extra APD. There’s nothing on their web site either.

There’s now another factor in this. BA has just announced it will reduce the fuel surcharge for long haul flights shorter than 9 hours by £5. So if I booked before, do I get this back…..

It seems that the uncertainty continues. Easyjet have asked me for the extra £5 on 4 flights booked for March but on a single booking with Monarch same date no email as yet. Are the airlines just collecting amounts over say £10? You would think that the government would make the position fairly clear and that the airlines would only ask for the amount IF there was a legal requirement for doing so - on the other hand!!

I’m flying with easyJet in February, and they sent me an email saying they required an *extra* £10 for a domestic short flight, but it is my understanding that the air passenger duty has gone from £5 to £10, heralding a supposed £5 payment from me to Gordon Brown.

Why are easyJet charging me £10 extra?

Yes Darren, I have an email with the usual “due to Gordon Brown bla bla” that advises me to login to my easyJet account, instructing me to pay the extra amount.

I booked four flights to Stanstead, and it advises me the additional duty charge total is £40 (£10 per passenger)

Yet watching BBC News and Sky this morning, and trawling this genre of website, I see it is only £5 for Short Haul, and £20 - 40 for long haul?

It does seem strange, but no doubt I’m just tangled in the web of confusion that is these increases in APD.

Sorry I should really clarify, on entering my easyJet account, I have a total amount of £40 extra to pay on my card, not the total duty amount is £40 including my previous transaction.

On BBC News this morning the Ryanair CEO appeared in a video interview; very abrupt and short I might add, and said more or less the same as every other budget airline, you’ll be covering the cost, and if you don’t pay *before* you get to the airport, you’re not flying.

It seems absurd that those who may not check their email and subsequently pay this in advance online will be refused to fly at the airport, especially having already paid the majority of their fare to the airline.

I wholly understand there’s not a great deal the airline can do about this tax, but they should be more understanding and forgiving as ultimately, it’s us as the travelling and paying public that suffer, again.

I received the e-mail from EasyJet asking me to pay the APD. Funny thing is, the link in the e-mail wasn’t even a link! Just orange writing. There is nothing on their website about payment methods, does anyone know of a way to pay, apart from phoning?

Just tried ringing the number I got in the e-mail. They spend about 5 minutes telling you other numbers to ring for services I don’t want or need! The menus are really poorly constructed. I hung up because I couldn’t find an option that applied. Has anyone paid easyjet?

Some quotes from the above mails:
> It seems like EasyJet are messing this up big time.
Right!
>i s anyone else waiting until after the 15th to see what happens?
Yes.
> the Telegraph dated 30th Dec had an article on the back of it’s
> Money supplement saying that until the Tax change was voted
> through by Parliament there is no legal obligation on the
> travelling public to pay the tax.
Has Parliament voted yet? Is this a law or not? What happens to the money EasyJet is collecting if Parliament decides that Gordon Brown needs teaching a lesson.
> Toby Nichol of Easyjet … hopes passengers will be prepared
> to pay an extra £5 to cover the tax as a goodwill gesture.
Why isnt Mr Nichol more concerned about EasyJet’s image and showing goodwill himself? He could quite easily offer us a set of alternatives, one of which would be to cancel the booking and return the fare which was obtained under false pretences. He could then resell the refunded tickets at a higher price and make a profit into the bargain. The price for the ticket I booked last November is already much higer than it was then.
Given the choice, I think I’d take the refund, the flight is not worth more to me than I payed for it. Everything else is dishonest trading and state piracy.

James Ingram

Just another rapacious and ill-thought out tax imposed by these “tossers” running the country. Christ how I hope Brown doesn’t get his moment of glory at number 10. Aren’t these b@stards taxing us enough already?

I’m not a fan of O’Leary’s but I do think his attitude is directed more towards the government than his customers.

The airlines seem to be in a difficult position as effectively they are increasingly becoming tax collectors.

Easyjet are charging £10. I got it sorted out. Where are you all getting this £5 figure from?

I booked flights with EasyJet in December for travel in April so presumably I will have to pay extra APD but I have not received an email from EasyJet demanding extra money. What does the email say regarding payment methods? Can you do it online or do you need to ring Customer Service (lot easier said than done!)

Fair play Darren, I’ll seek out the interview.

yeah. i have never recieved an email from easyjet. i booked on the 10th dec. ive been trying to get through to them all morning but its always busy =s

Guys, I’m very confused. I need to pay the money to Ryanair for 2 flights in february, one booked last June and one booked last July, and also one flight in March booked last July. I have not received anything from the airline telling me I need to pay it but I did hear the Michael O’Leary interview and he was pretty clear about the fact that it needs to be paid. Does anyone have a concrete solution to this? It is not possible to phone Ryanair as a previous writer said. Also there is nothing on the website. I don’t want to show up and find my flight is gone! Help!!

SOLUTION!!!!!!!!! Wooo Hooooo! I spoke to Ryanair, they automatically charge the extra £5 to the card with which you paid for your flight. Confirmation emails will be sent out from tomorrow.

Final note for Ryanair reservations… my bank card had changed since I booked the flight as my old one had expired in the meantime. Therefore it would not have been possible to debit my old card as it is now inactive. Ryanair tell me that if there are any problems with payments the customers will be contacted. Good luck to all you other airline travellers, I hope it’s as straightforward.

On a technical / legal point, is it not ‘illegal’ to store/record the Card Security Code for future use? Would any ‘legal eagles’ like to comment on this? I was under the impression that ” …this number must only be used for the transaction being undertaken and stored/recorded for future use”….

oops, I missed out the crucial “NOT” that comes just before stored/recorded in the last sentence…. Very important, I think…

I booked with easyjet on 16th December - as yet no e-mail. Am I liable or is there a possibility they already had it added on at this time? All very confusing!!

Just to clarify the 5 pound vs 10 pound issue…….you will be charged an EXTRA 5 pound each time you DEPART on a flight from a UK airport - That means that you will be charged an extra 10 pounds if your trip happens to be domestic (eg London to Glasgow …etc)
BTW…… this is small potatoes compared with the EXTRA 20 pounds (or 40 pounds for premium economy) if you happen to fly outside of Europe with Virgin Atlantic!!! - SHAME on them given that BA are waivering the additional duties for their passengers (although Virgin say that they are giving out a “voucher” to the same value to be used on a future flight with them.

I’ve just heard from my package operator (Scott Dunn) that they are passing the extra fiver on to customers, despite the fact that it’s less than 2% and it’s a package. The flights are with BA, so it’s only those that (pre)booked directly that will benefit from their generosity.

Any other package operators introducing surcharges?

i too had a right old caffuffle with thomson whom i had booked a flight to tenerife with in October. My departure date is 13 march and i came across an email from them informing me of the extra tax i had to pay. A telephone number was given in order to do this. I rang four times with no luck. I then went on to the thomson website and pulled up my booking to find that they had already taken the tax from me not only once but twice and then refunded one lot back. I was absolutely livid to say the least. How dare they take money from my account without my permission. On the email they sent me there was no mention of this £5 being taken from my debit card. I rang them and told them i was furious and that they had no right to take money from my account without my permission. To me that is theft. I am taking the matter up with abta and will let you all know what happens.

Scott Dunn claim that they have some small print in their T’s and C’s that allow them to do this, but my take is that this is illegal. I’m wondering whether to shop them to some holiday/watchdog type program.

Any thoughts?

My family and I booked thru Jetsave(part of TUI) in Aug 06 and arrived at the airport 23 Mar for our flight with Virgin, completely unaware of this extra duty. I was told if I had booked before Dec 6th I had to pay it there and then or would not be allowed on the plane. I paid an extra £80, feeling quite miffed that Jetsave hadn’t advised me. When returning home their small print states”if the increase is less than 2% they will absorb, if more they will pass it on”, however it then goes on to say “the last invoice you receive will be guaranteed, unless I change the booking and increase in costs which occur after then will be borne by them”. The last invoice I have is dated 2nd Mar, confirming payment, I think its certainly worth taking the issue up with them !!