How a 34-cent ticket adds up to a $70 bill

YOUR mother had it right: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. That goes double for advertised airfares, at least in some parts of the world, including, perhaps, the U.S.

Take low-fare carrier RyanAir (www.ryanair.com), which is based in Dublin, Ireland. Its website recently advertised 17-cent one-way fares to various European destinations.

That meant one could theoretically fly round trip from London to Dublin for 34 cents, less than the cost of a subway ticket within central London. I tried that itinerary and did find 34-cent round-trip fares.

But then came the taxes and fees. For this itinerary, they included $9 for government taxes; $33 for something called “PSC,” which a RyanAir customer service agent told me was an airport fee; and $13 for something called an “Ins & Whc levy.” This interesting charge pays for the airline’s insurance (“Ins”) policy and, because it is discriminatory to charge a wheelchair (“whc”) passenger to check a wheelchair, all customers are charged a fee to cover the cost.

That 34-cent airfare was now $55.34. But it didn’t stop there. Using a credit card to pay for the reservation added $3 per passenger. (It’s $1 to use a debit card.) Checking bags -- even one bag -- costs $6 per bag, up to 44 pounds total (which drops to 33 pounds after Nov. 1). More than that and you’ll pay $10 per extra pound.

So if you pay for your reservation with a credit card and check a couple of bags, that 34-cent fare is now more than $70. Although that’s still arguably a good fare from London to Dublin, it is more than 200 times the advertised fare.

In the U.S., travelers are ostensibly protected against such potentially misleading advertising by a Department of Transportation rule requiring U.S. airlines to fold all of their charges into the so-called base fare in their advertising, whether it’s online or in print. They are allowed to exclude only government-imposed taxes and fees, though the actual rule dictates that the “total fare” will be advertised. In enforcing the rule, the DOT has largely ignored that requirement.

The a la carte world of creative airfare advertising may be coming to America.

“The department has decided that the time is ripe after 21 years of marketing innovations for a re-examination of the fare-advertising rule,” the DOT said in November in a notice seeking public comment.

It is considering several options: keeping things as they are; enforcing the existing rule requiring airlines to advertise the total fare, including taxes; changing the rule to require the listing of the total fare only; or scrapping the full-fare requirement completely.

Public comment, which has closed, was largely negative about any change that would complicate the task of computing the real price of airfare.

“Taxes and fees can represent as much as 35% of the price of any given airline ticket [and] it is only fair and proper to include those prices in advertisements,” Wulfrin Oberlin of Redhill Travel in Corte Madera, Calif., said in comments typical of those filed with the DOT. “Anything less would be misleading.”

Fuel surcharges add about $150 per round-trip flight to Europe. Foreign airlines are allowed to exclude the fuel surcharges from their advertising.

A search on Orbitz (www.orbitz.com) for a fare from Los Angeles to London in September provided an example. Orbitz, unlike Travelocity (www.travelocity.com) or Expedia (www.expedia.com), breaks out the base fare from the total fare, showing two prices on its search results page.

A quick survey of the base fares (displayed in boldface type) made it appear that foreign airlines were offering lower fares.

Virgin Atlantic’s base fare was $523; British Airways’, $548; and Air New Zealand’s, $570. Compared with American Airlines’ base fare of $638 or Continental’s at $718, it appeared the foreigners had the better fares.

But when all taxes, fees and surcharges were added in, the picture was quite different. Among those carriers, American’s total fare was $15 lower than Virgin’s, $40 lower than British Airways’ and $82 lower than Air New Zealand’s.

Confusing? Just wait. Now United Airlines appears to be listing its base fares without fuel surcharges for its international flights. When advertised on sites such as Orbitz that separate out the base fare from the total fare, United’s fares appear to be on par with international carriers’ advertised fares.

In the example above, United’s base fare was $526 -- $112 lower than American’s base fare. But after taxes, fees and the fuel surcharge were added for the total fare, United’s fare was $8 more than American’s.

DOT spokesman Bill Mosley said the agency’s enforcement personnel were aware of what United was doing and did not take issue as long as the total fare was included. Orbitz declined to comment “on how supplier(s) choose to break out their pricing.”

United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski initially said a “computer glitch” caused the discrepancy at Orbitz but did not return messages seeking further comment.

American spokesman Tim Wagner said he was not worried that this kind of base fare advertising put American at a competitive disadvantage.

“Our consumers are savvy enough about shopping online” to know that the first price you see isn’t always the one you’ll pay, he said.

Especially not when that first price is 34 cents.

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Contact James Gilden at james.gilden@latimes.com.