Aer Arann - beware of internal flight taxes!

hi all,

Just had to book a flight for a work collegue, Galway to Dublin return on Aer Arann. Noticed that they are now charging tax for internal flights, which was never the case before. From having a quick browse through different dates etc. it looks like the addition of tax to the fares means you will pay almost double what you would have paid a month ago! I rang Aer Arann to query it, but did not receive a very satisfactory answer. The girl said that they had always charged tax but that it used to be included in the price quoted, whereas now they are breaking it out in to flight prices and then tax price. When I said that the price had almost doubled because of the tax, she just said that they had upped their prices 'a small bit' but that was because they were doing special offers on some flights....
Unbelievable!

Basically, in May 2005 flight from Galway - Dublin, one way, €39.99
August 2005 flight from Galway - Dublin, one way, €39.99 + tax of €32.18, total cost (before credit card charge) = €72.18.

How can that be fair?

Hmmm.. Sounds a bit dogey to be honest. Are they terming this strictly 'taxes' or do they call it 'taxes and fees'?

If it's the former I'm almost certain it's a lot more than the standard taxes but I'll try to find out tomorrow and post back.

(btw are you sure about this?, I just tryed a few random dates for galway-dublin both return and single and am getting zero for taxes every time.)

Ok, this is getting stranger and stranger......I went on the website this morning and as you said, no taxes appearing for flights from Galway - Dublin. But there definitely was when I booked yesterday, flight price displayed as €66.99, plus €32.18 tax + €4 credit card fee, total cost for one way was €103.17! It just said 'tax - €32.18'.
Delighted if it is back to zero tax, but peed off because it definitely had tax added with the last 2/3 week or so......

Will keep a close eye on it I think, something fishy going on as far as I can see...

sorry, my mistake, it said 'taxes and fees', and when I went in to the detail of it, the following came up:


€26 - Airport Service Charge
€2.19 - Insurance Surcharge
€4.00 - Airport Security charge

I took this from the confirmation email I received for yesterday's booking, but nothing coming up today on the website....

€30 for Airport Charges of one form or another sounds dramatically above what Ryanair and the Airport authority had been discussing?

Sounds outrageous!

Roy

€30 per passeanger Airport charges is a Joke. It should be more like €5 per passenger I'd have thought.

Does this page shed any light on it.
[broken link removed]

-Rd

Hummm,

Firstly, they are misleading us by including the word "taxes" there.... AFAIK, there is no direct tax on any internal flight, levied by the Irish Government (thankfully, God knows they get us everywhere else )

Secondly, that looks like a complete rip off €30 for Airport Charges, unless Aer Arran are toying with the idea of putting all their landing charges, fueling charges etc into that figure and breaking it down per passenger or something. Again, misleading & not satisfactory.

A shame to see this happening really, I had held Aer Arran in reasonbly high regard & considered them a fairly decent business to date.

Cheers

G>
http://www.rpoints.com/newbie

Apparently they have now stopped showing these 'taxes' again as they got so many complaints....still doesn't explain how they can now offer flights for €29.99 one way Galway - Dublin, when a week ago they said that the 'taxes' on that flight were €32.18!

Still, glad to see the usual prices back again, hope they leave things as they are now.