British Air on Sale
Good news Folks…. British Air is on Sale!(but make sure you notice that my tongue is in my cheek before you start jumping for glee!)
I checked the fares on BA(from Kalamazoo, no less) and ONLY $640 plus taxes. It’s about time something went on sale…Now I’ll just grabbed the flights and put together an itinerary. I put the itinerary together and think it’s worthy of mentioning in what I found.
The seats had to be selected in “Q” inventory…. so I got 6 flights(AZO-ORD-LHR-ATH AND the same thing backwards to get back to Kalamazo… First red flag… the fare was only $640 but taxes were $341.50(that’s over 50% in taxes!). Guess what they added to the taxes- the fuel surcharge. Another little airline trick- add the fuel charges to the taxes so you can advertise a lower fare!
Anyone who works in the US and pays taxes knows that taxes are taxes and expenses are expenses. Can you imagine what would happen if you told the IRS that all the coffee you bought(keep you flying!) was a tax you paid! Good Luck…. The IRS wouldn’t buy it… but the airlines seem to think that we’re not that sharp(or they hope that we’re not)… so they call it a tax and put it under that category instead of adding the “fuel surcharge” to the “sale” price(afterall, it doesn’t look like much of a sale price if you add the fuel surcharge.(see AirlineTicketTaxes)
OK…enough about taxes….but the fare is still not too bad(at last for this year- it would be a nightmare any time up to now!) $980 including taxes(and that was for a 5 week stay)… but… the only way to get a “Q” fare back is if you overnight in London since the only BA flights from Athens that have “Q” seats depart at 7pm!! What about all the empty seats on the earlier flights? Sorry…. we’re going to call those “V”, and “S” and um..let’s see “m”…. as a matter of fact we’ll call them anything BUT “Q”. So if you want to use our $640 sale it comes with $340 in taxes plus a night in London( another $100-200 in…let’s call those…. “personal taxes”? and they can be another hidden expense).
I remember when Pan Am went out of business. It was really a bit of a shock… and there was some sadness as the airline was something that I grew up with(of course I was younger and more niave back then!)… but my how times have changed-whenever I hear that another airline is going under… I think to myself- they probably deserve it!
BA is in a precarious financial position right now and I heard that top management is on it’s way out…. I would say “Good, they deserve it!”, but they’ll probably recieve their multi-million dollar severence package and head happily down the road to their next assignment so they can continue to put their incompetence to work for some other lucky company…until….it’s severence time….and another walk….
I can almost put these guys in the same category as weathermen. How can anyone be paid so much to be so wrong?