The Airline news and travel blog service

I note that the refund of tax on cancelled fights has raised its ugly head again. The oft-repeated complaint is that airlines charge high administration fees and generally make it difficult for passengers to reclaim the tax. Passengers then give up the struggle and the airline keeps the tax. Of one thing you can be sure, unless you actually fly or are a no-show, the airline does not pay the tax over to the government.

The rules here are very clear. Airline passenger taxes are applicable to valid (and un-cancelled) tickets at the time of departure. If you cancel your ticket, you are entitled to any refund specified in your contract plus a return of all the paid-in-advance passenger taxes.

The airline is entitled to charge an administration fee for processing the refund.  The law says that the fee must be representative of the true costs of processing the tax refund and must not be a hidden cancellation penalty. The difficulty will always be in establishing a true (fair and reasonable) level of cost and it is here that the airlines tend to take advantage.

From my personal experience, I have successfully reclaimed the tax on two aborted bookings to the USA. Both were with Virgin Atlantic and both were handled very efficiently and at a (in my view) quite reasonable cost. 

I have also had cancelations on budget airline flights within Europe. I gave up on the first of these and did not even bother with the others. The sums of money involved were obviously smaller but the aggravation level was much higher.

I am sorry to have to admit to being a wimp but the budget airlines wore me down.