Taxes and fees hit the traveler’s wallet

Question: I recently booked a trip through a tour company, with the flights on Air France. We were hit with a $437 surcharge for a flight that originally cost $800. I won’t cancel the trip, but I certainly will never book another for which Air France is the carrier. Is this legal?

Peggy Brutsche

Long Beach

Answer: When I receive letters like this, I often go from zero to outrage in 2.2 seconds. But in this case, my ire, which I so savor, was unwarranted.

In booking this trip, Brutsche used Adventureland Travel & Tours in North Hollywood. Miriam Owiti of Adventureland said the $800 was not the cost of a ticket, but the credit the tour company applies if a client chooses to book his or her own airfare, perhaps using frequent-flier miles. That makes sense.

The taxes and fees, Owiti said, are not included in the cost of the tour, and that is spelled out on the form every client sees (and which she sent to me). Brutsche said she had seen that form, which clearly states that certain taxes and fees aren’t included. By breaking those out, the tour operator can’t take any markup on them. So this also makes sense.

The only thing that doesn’t make sense is how big a bite taxes and fees can take out of a traveler’s pocket, and that’s nobody’s fault, in this case. Just to see how hard that bite is, I checked a fare on Southwest for mid-August, Burbank to Oakland. The lowest fare I found was $79 each way, but the total was $179.40, thanks to taxes and fees. “For U.S. domestic air travel, ticket taxes and fees collected by the federal government and airport authorities add 16%, on average, to ticket prices,” said Joakim Karlsson, professor of aviation policy and management in the School of Aviation Sciences at Daniel Webster College and one of the researchers whose work is featured at the Airline Ticket Tax Project at web.mit.edu/TicketTax. He notes that the 16% figure doesn’t include some of the other annoying fees we’ve become familiar with, such as the checked baggage fee.

Because fees lurk everywhere, it’s important to understand your costs when you buy any travel product. The U.S. Tour Operators Assn., based in New York, says this on its website: “Several … factors may add to the price, such as optional excursions, service charges and/or taxes, weekend air surcharges and high season supplements. And, if you’re traveling alone, there is often a supplement fee for single accommodations.”

John Stachnik, chairman of that organization and co-owner of Mayflower Tours in Downers Grove, Ill., wants the “traveler to know we [the tour operator] are not doing anything nefarious.”

Agreed. And as travelers are learning all too well, this is the time of the fee, with charges for baggage and for prime-time travel, for choosing a seat in advance and for having a snack. Fees are becoming so commonplace that that new mantra may be: Fee high? Ho-hum.

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