As we reported earlier, airline passengers are losing out on money they are entitled to claim back when they don’t take a booked flight. Its only Easyjet that will refund you the tax with no admin fees..
Airline customers are well within their rights to claim back Air Passenger Duty but often don’t because carriers make the process too complex and costly which make it a complete rip-off.
And it’s no trifling amount, either, with some APD amounting to over £100 for a long-haul premium cabin flight. But APD starts from just £11 pp so for a family of 4 thats £44, why let the airlines keep your money.
Many airlines charge a huge fee to process the claim, deterring customers further.
So here is a tip contact your credit card company and ask for a charge back refund – explain you want to reclaim the tax on a flight and the airline is trying to charge you more than the tax to refund it..
Administration charges for reclaiming Air passenger Duty
- •Easyjet – Free
- •Ryanair – £17
- •Flybe – £25
- •Virgin Atlantic – £30
- •British Airways – £30
Which on the basic £11 tax / duty refund is a disgrace.
British Airways says the charge of up to £30 is an accurate reflection of what it actually costs the company in administration costs.
And Flybe told the BBC it had “no choice but to invest in the human resources required to administer the collection and payment of several third party taxes, and our charges are reasonable”.
Among the major airlines, only Easyjet will refund the tax for free.
This means that unless passengers are paying a higher rate of the duty, such charges make it impossible to reclaim.
Which? spokeswoman Rochelle Turner said: “In some cases it costs at least twice as much to reclaim the tax as the tax itself.”
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Flybe has just repaid taxes, but not explained why, only prompted by an email asking for how to get the tax back for a flight they had cancelled. Thanks for tip.
“So here is a tip contact your credit card company and ask for a charge back refund – explain you want to reclaim the tax on a flight and the airline is trying to charge you more than the tax to refund it..”
Didn’t work in my case. I had to cancel flights over the summer owing to a death in the family. My travel insurance paid up some money (minus £50/person excess) but we were still £75.58 adrift which, give or take a few unexplained pence, came down to a non-refundable £24 booking charge with Flybe plus £51.77 tax, refundable from Flybe. Fair play to the Flybe phone operator who managed to tell me deadpan, without laughing, that I’d actually receive £1.77 (after deduction of £25/person admin fee). Can’t have been easy.
I told them I’d deal with it in a different way and, as advised above, contacted Visa – but no joy there either. They told me they could not give a charge back refund unless the flight had become unavailable (the example given being that the air company collapsed).
That is wrong get back to your credit card company and demand they refund you – they have no right to say that – You cannot be denied chargeback for something you have not received