V-Flyer

Hi all
I'm confusing myself about taxes when booking outbound and return reward seats separately
As soon as I saw availability for an outbound reward seat on the date I wanted, I grabbed it
I've now got to wait for my return flight dates to open up
When I do dummy bookings on the VA website, it looks like the taxes for the return leg are considerably higher when booked as a one way as opposed to the 2nd leg of a return
Is this right or is there a way around it? For example should I call flying club when my return date opens to try and combine the flights into a return?
I'm sure that someone from flying club told me that it makes no difference to cost to book both sectors separately on-line last time I asked them?

Where are you going from and to?

Nick

LGW - MCO then LAX to LHR

Some people have said on here they are cheaper doing two separate bookings.
I'm not sure.
I have just done my hols for next year. LGW to MCO then ATL to LHR

For two of us in Upper it was £598 going out and $800 coming back.

The big advantage is you get to book the outbound as soon as it is released.

Dick D

Linda671 wrote:LGW - MCO then LAX to LHR

If you are travelling from LAX to LHR then the taxes will be different and probably higher than the LGW-MCO. Among the things included in the taxes are airport landing fees, use of jet bridges and a lot more besides. Both LAX and LHR will have higher fees than the outbound airports of your routing. If I book a straight return from my home airport into LHR, the breakdown of the same shows that the return leg from that airport is always higher because of the fees

Thanks all, so here is the thing. If I build a dummy booking for reward seats with dates that are already released , you get a breakdown of the taxes
If I plug in a return flight LGW-MCO-LAX-LHR, the taxes are £241.45 outbound and £86.40 return
If I just plug in a one way flight LAX-LHR, the taxes are £234.00 for that leg alone
As you can see, if I booked a return flight in one transaction, my total taxes per person would be £327.85 but if I book the two flights separately, my total taxes would be £475.45, that's quite a difference
This is why I am confused as the flying club are telling me I can book each leg separately and it makes no difference to cost??

Linda671 wrote:This is why I am confused as the flying club are telling me I can book each leg separately and it makes no difference to cost??

Flying Club are somewhat wrong. It does make a (huge) difference. That said, some routes it does work out better to book separately, ie, HKG.

One way to MCO

Y £147.02
W £241.52
J £294.52

One way to LHR from LAX

Y $134.60 (£92)
W $234.60 (£160)
J $457.60 (£312)

Return fares for MCO / LAX

Y £215.92
W £342.92
J £462.92

Linda671 wrote:Thanks all, so here is the thing. If I build a dummy booking for reward seats with dates that are already released , you get a breakdown of the taxes
If I plug in a return flight LGW-MCO-LAX-LHR, the taxes are £241.45 outbound and £86.40 return
If I just plug in a one way flight LAX-LHR, the taxes are £234.00 for that leg alone
As you can see, if I booked a return flight in one transaction, my total taxes per person would be £327.85 but if I book the two flights separately, my total taxes would be £475.45, that's quite a difference
This is why I am confused as the flying club are telling me I can book each leg separately and it makes no difference to cost??

How are you getting £327.85? What cabins are you trying?

I'm going to put my special Tonty is being pedantic hat on.

Other than the base fare a ticket price has three other elements added to it - fees, taxes and surcharges.

The fees are charged by airports (passenger service fee) and for the US in terns of charges for customs, security etc

Taxes are things like UK APD (only applies to flights leaving the UK) and US transportation taxes. These are generally fixed amounts.

Surcharges - this is 100% down to VS and is kept by them. It's been called several things in the past - 'fuel surcharge','carrier imposed surcharge' and 'international and insurance' surcharge. They like us to think this a tax but isn't.

It is the latter that you are seeing vary from checking one way and return fares.

Basically VS charges a higher surcharge for flights leaving the US than it does leaving the UK and this is the difference you are seeing by booking it as two separate legs.

I also ran into this issue recently. I enquired why this was the case and was informed by a very helpful person at the airline that there is a fixed cost to any booking made whether that booking is single or return. I concluded that if you buy two singles you are being charged that fixed cost twice rather than the once you would have been charged if you had booked a return. Whether that cost should be as much as £200 more on an upper fare is a question, but there is some logic to what Virgin are doing since there is more effort involved in ticketing two singles.

Thanks for everyone's replies.
It sounds like I'm going to need to speak to Flying Club when my return date is available and try and get it combined with the original booking to create a return flight
It's certainly going to be more expensive to have 2 x one ways
I've booked 2 x one ways in the past, LGW-MCO and MCO-LGW but didn't think to check as FC had told me it makes no difference but it clearly does
Thanks again for your help

Linda671 wrote:Thanks for everyone's replies.
It sounds like I'm going to need to speak to Flying Club when my return date is available and try and get it combined with the original booking to create a return flight
It's certainly going to be more expensive to have 2 x one ways
I've booked 2 x one ways in the past, LGW-MCO and MCO-LGW but didn't think to check as FC had told me it makes no difference but it clearly does
Thanks again for your help

When I booked my return they said they couldn't combine it.
Or rather, the only way to combine it was to cancel the original booking and make a complete new one.
Since I'd already bagged two G's to MCO I didn't want to risk cancelling them and have two bookings.
Dick D

Maybe this is just Virgins policy, as just recently I did the same as Dicky bagged my reward seat with BA for the outbound waited till the inbound was released. Phoned up BA they combined my flights into a return from two separate legs and did not charge me anything, was pleasantly surprised as expected a charge. Mind you BA will not hold any reservation for you and Virgin do for 72 hours before confirming booking.

If there is still availability for the outbound leg when I book the return then I'll simply cancel the first booking and make a new return one
The £35 admin fee would be less than the additional taxes
If no availability then I'll happily just pay the return taxes