I’m planning a trip to Europe this year and preparing to take the kids along. There are three of them and as they’ve grown too big to successfully hide in my luggage (even though I pack rather light), that means that I get to buy them tickets, too. They love this. My bank account does not.
So you can imagine that I was pretty excited to hear that Europe’s biggest budget carrier, Ryanair, is planning to offer some seriously cheap transatlantic flights by 2020. I realize that’s still five years away but my kiddos will still be in tow by then (frankly, I can’t imagine the youngest ever letting me leave without him – especially when he gets wind that I’m headed near an English Premier League site).
RyanAir’s plan is to offer flights at deeply discounted prices from Europe to the U.S. I realize that’s the wrong way (since I’m on this side of the pond) but I’m guessing those flights will also head back the other way. I can make this work – especially since tickets would start at £10 ($15 US). No, that’s not a typo. They really are hoping to price tickets beginning at £10 ($15 US), or roughly the cost that I pay to get to and from the City of Philadelphia by train. Suburban Philadelphia to Philadelphia, New York to London. What’s the difference? Apparently, not much. Except for the whole flying over the ocean part.
But before you start planning your trip to Hogwarts, there’s a catch: those little “extras” for which RyanAir, like other budget airlines, charges you additional. Things like baggage and seat reservations. They also charge for air. Really. For £50 ($73 US) per hour, you can reserve therapeutic oxygen.
The real charges, however, are taxes. You’ll pay an estimated $200 in taxes for that £10 ($15 US) ticket from the U.K. to the U.S. That works out to about 1300%. And unlike the fare, you can’t use a service like Kayak to negotiate your tax bill down.
In fact, taxes and fees on travel-related services continually astonish eager travelers each year. The cost of the most basic trip can easily escalate quickly. In the U.S., federal taxes and fees make up more than 20% of the cost of a typical $300 ticket. Even worse: the cost of fees and taxes has increased each year since 1971 even though the average cost of the base fare has decreased (you can download a historic list of air travel-related excise taxes here as a pdf).
Inside our own borders (plus Canada and Mexico), your ticket could include a ticket tax of 7.5%; a flat Travel Facilities Tax of $8.70 on flight segments to or from Alaska or Hawaii; a flat U.S. Federal Segment Fee of $4.00 within the continental United States; a Passenger Facility Charge of up to $4.50 per facility; and the September 11th Security Fee of up to $5.60 one-way, or $11.20 roundtrip (however, there’s no cap so the fee applies to each of multiple stops).
And if you’re wondering what all of this has to do with flights leaving from outside of our borders, that’s because U.S. taxes may apply to those, too. You can expect to pay the U.S. International Transportation Tax of $17.50 for all flights arriving in or departing from the United States, Puerto Rico, or the U.S. Virgin Islands; a $5.00 U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Fee; and a $7.00 U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Fee for international arrivals. Those are just U.S. based fees: that doesn’t include foreign taxes and fees imposed by other countries.
If those fees feel a little bit higher than this same time last year, you’re not crazy. Fees were bumped last year. Specifically, on July 21, 2014, Congress boosted the September 11th Security Fee from $2.50 per leg with a $5.00 cap to $5.60 per leg with no cap. Folks weren’t happy about that so the law changed again in December 2014, imposing a cap on round trip travel. And before you exhale a breath because those fees are keeping us safe, it’s worth noting that the fee hike is not earmarked for increased security: it was part of a deficit reduction strategy.
Other fees and taxes may also apply to hotels, booze and food – you certainly won’t get out of a trip abroad tax free.
But look at it this way: if you’re saving a few hundred dollars on airfare, you’ll have more money for Guinness, Quidditch sets and invisibility cloaks (my kids swear we can buy those).