Miles and More flight redemption - WTF?????

I don't know if I'm stupid for not knowing it would be this way, but I sure wished I knew this before-hand....

I've traveled a couple times for business, and racked up enough miles on the Miles and More program for a free flight to Japan. My wife and I were planning a trip there, and I thought hey, awesome, we get a free flight!

Her ticket, purchased at United.com was $941. My "free flight" ticket came with additional taxes due of $629.08.

I'm speechless.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles-more-lufthansa-austrian-swi...

http://blog.frequentflier.com/2011/01/qa-how-could-a-british-air...

i may be dumb but i have company. i've redeemed free domestic flights on other programs, if i paid taxes they were so small i don't remember paying any.

just. wow.

Mikul said:   I just booked a free flight using 50k air miles with American Air and only paid about $50 in taxes. Are you booking directly with the airline or through a travel agency/service?

direct phone call to miles and more.

Miles & More Service Team in: USA
City: Santa Clarita, CA
Zip: 91380
P.O. Box: P.O.Box 946 USA
Phone: +1-800-581-6400
+1-866-846-4283 Textphone (TTY)
Fax: +1-661-244-4950
e-mail: nycxrtea@dlh.de
Opening hours:
Monday 08:00 - 20:00
Tuesday 08:00 - 20:00
Wednesday 08:00 - 20:00
Thursday 08:00 - 20:00
Friday 08:00 - 20:00
Opening Hours are in Eastern Standard Time (EST)

this is crazy. i just talked to my sister, she looked up the taxes due on a free flight on united, using united's program, and the taxes were ~$50.

something is very very wrong here.

edit - clarifications. miles and more is lufthansa's frequent flier program. i used that program to get tickets on united, a star alliance partner. is that the difference?? i've never seen any notice of there being any difference within the star alliance program.

my wife's ticket was purchased on United.com, the best price on kayak.

I guess international flight taxes are different than domestic. I redeemed my delta miles back in 2005 for an internationl travel via singapore airlines and I paid $50 to get the paper ticket. After that rules changed and I once called to redeem miles again and they gave me the sme quote of some $600+. We went to NJ during the first week of jan with our miles from continental miles and I paid liek $7.50 because we booked overnight. just my 2 cents...correct me if am wrong

We also learned the same lesson the hard way. Our free flights to Europe cost almost as much as low cost paid tickets. It's all taxes and fees. Free tickets in the US are just about that, free.

M&M had a website with special offers which sometimes gave real deals:
http://www.meilenschnaeppchen.de/index_en.htm
unfortunately it seems that those expired and no new ones are available.

Also you can pay taxes using miles but as it seems only within Europe:
Lufthansa

I could not find something similar with united.

It is airline specific. In general, the US-based carriers do not add large fuel surcharges and such, and the European ones do. There was much discussion of this last year when many US citizens signed up for the chase 100K mile bonus credit card. Many redeemed with BA's partners (AA, LAN, etc) to avoid the high charges that BA (and many others) add to frequent flyer redemptions

sleepy114 said:   I just booked a flight to Japan using my United Airline miles and the taxes for two people was only $119. I think there is something wrong with your booking. I know United has an option to book with points and miles where half of your round trip is miles and the other half is money. I'm thinking that you may have selected this option. I would double check the number of miles it took to redeem your ticket. A round trip to Japan should be 65K miles.

He didn't book with United Airline miles, so your situation is not the same. He is paying fuel surcharge because he is using Lufthansa.

I've booked flights with Continental and United (pre-merger) to Japan on partner airline (e.g. ANA) and paid very little in taxes, less than $100/ticket for sure...nothing like your $600. I'm assuming it is, like suggested above, due to it being a European airline program who often charge very large fuel surcharges.

The best way to accumulate miles is to pick a single US-based carrier, and use their program, even if you hardly fly them directly. All the alliances allow you to accumulate with the partner of your choice. For example, I almost never fly Delta, but just put in my my Delta Skypesos number when I fly one of their Skyteam partners (which I do somewhat regularly). You can run into limitations with some niche carriers like EVA(Taiwan) or some of the domestic Chinese ones...but in the grand scheme of things not a big deal. Keeps your miles in one or two places, maybe three if you use all the major alliances, and quicker to accumulate/use.

estiel said:   I don't know if I'm stupid for not knowing it would be this way, but I sure wished I knew this before-hand....

I've traveled a couple times for business, and racked up enough miles on the Miles and More program for a free flight to Japan. My wife and I were planning a trip there, and I thought hey, awesome, we get a free flight!

Her ticket, purchased at United.com was $941. My "free flight" ticket came with additional taxes due of $629.08.

I'm speechless.

You sure you have enough miles to book the ticket? I think if you post an itemized receipt.. we can probably tell you why. Perhaps you only had 40k miles and you're redeeming an 60k award flight, so it made you purchase the additional 20k miles.

The flyertalk link above discusses how it's an issue with lufthansa. Another site I found says it's a common issue with European frequent flier programs. I'll post it when I get back to work on Monday. Re points, I had enough. The flight award from north America was 80k miles, I had 81k.

The flight award was booked via phone call with miles and more. There was a good five minutes in there of me being incredulous and protesting. Lesson learned. If anyone's using miles and more.... Abandon ship ye have no hope. Might apply to all European programs per the article ill post Monday.

Here's the link located, I found it in my chats: http://boardingarea.com/blogs/viewfromthewing/2011/01/15/airlines-that-tax-you-when-you-redeem-your-miles-and-those-that-do-not/

estiel said:   http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles-more-lufthansa-austrian-swi...

http://blog.frequentflier.com/2011/01/qa-how-could-a-british-air...

i may be dumb but i have company. i've redeemed free domestic flights on other programs, if i paid taxes they were so small i don't remember paying any.

just. wow.
those links specifically attribute the extra charges on award tix to fuel surcharges, which US-based carriers don't (yet) charge.
somebosdy's gotta pay for those sandwiches they hand out on LH even on short-haul flights

I know that with AA, if you book a flight that's not at least a month in advance, it costs $50 for the "convenience" to do it. Maybe your flight is not far out enough to avoid such costs?

estiel said:   kvs25 said:   I know that with AA, if you book a flight that's not at least a month in advance, it costs $50 for the "convenience" to do it. Maybe your flight is not far out enough to avoid such costs?

Definitely not the issue, travel is in April. See previous entries re lufthansa-specific issues, possibly also with other European programs.

Definitely with other European programs. For those talking about AA fees, they should look at what BA does. Air Canada is another good example.

I just booked a rewards flight on BA for my mom to go to the UK. She had a pile of rewards and wanted to go either business or first as a special treat. For either class the "free" ticket had about $1000 in fees including $629 as a fuel surcharge. There was a very small (less than $100) difference between business and 1st so I doubt that tourist fees would have been much less. In the end she got a first class ticket for $1k that looked like it would have otherwise cost $10-11k so the fees weren't that bad but would have sucked on a "lesser" ticket.

nsdp said:   If none of you noticed effective Jan 1 the EU imposed a "carbon tax" on all flights into the EU...That would explain the charges on using Lufthansa points as opposed to United points.

No, it has almost nothing to do with it. The carbon surcharge only affects flights to and from the EU, and it's tiny anyway ($3-6/flight). The OP is absolutely right. The "taxes" are actually "fees," and most (if not all) of the European carriers apply their "fuel surcharge" to award tickets as well as to paid tickets. Generally, US carriers don't do so.

90C4 said:   I just booked Boston to St Maarten for 3, and it was 70,000 miles and $69.35 per ticket. I don't understand what this means, but the fee was broken down as:
AY 7.50 XA 5.00 XY 7.00 YC 5.50 FG 9.35
FH 30.00 IW 5.00

FH and IW are St. Maarten taxes (departure and arrival tax), AY, XA, XY, and YC are US immigration and security taxes, not familiar with FG.

So, almost all (and maybe really all) of these really are taxes (i.e. paid directly to gov'ts) not fees (kept by the airline).

cestmoi123 said:   terriprg said:   International flifght taxes are nowdays about 1/2 of your flight ticket price. i have just purchased ticket for my flight to europe - $400 flight ticket and $750 taxes and add. charges. For Japan your charge sounds reasonable.

For clarity, most of those "fees and taxes" aren't actually taxes. They're just the airline splitting up the ticket price between a "ticket price" and a "fuel surcharge." It would be like McDonalds saying:

A cheeseburger is $0.75*

*Plus $1.00 bun and meat fee.

Not quite. While I am in no way attempting to justify the practice, fuel is a major part of an airline's cost - particularly for transoceanic travel - the price of oil is constantly changing, impossible to predict. By adding a separate surcharge for fuel, airlines can claim to offer fares that better reflect their actual costs. BA typically has some of the largest surcharges in the industry.

The FAA requires US airlines to show the TOTAL price - including fees, surcharges, taxes - on websites, which should prevent it from happening here.

Just booked tickets to London on AA using AA miles, business class there, cattle class return. Was charged about $190 each for the tickets. Would be nice to see this on the purchase page instead of just asking for a credit card number before submitting. Last time I used miles (domestically) a few years ago I only remember paying a few dollars. Didn't know if bumping up to business class affected the amount due or not.

studentforum said:   estiel, so what did you decide? I'm in the same boat - trying to book a miles-and-more award flight from LAX to Frankfurt via M&M phone service and offered 60K miles for roundtrip + $680 in taxes/fees. I have well over 100K in miles, so it's not that I don't have sufficient balance. My itinerary would be United and Lufthansa, so I'm thinking maybe if I just request a LH flight it will reduce the tax?

i used the points and paid the fee. lesson learned, i'm abandoning the miles and more program.