UK Ferry Tickets

If there’s one thing that drives holidaymakers mad, it’s finding out they’ve got to pay a surcharge on their trip.

These days you can get surcharged for everything – fuel, airport taxes, credit card fees, checking in luggage. You name it, there can be an added cost for it.

In a hugely competitive market, travel companies want to appear to be offering a cheaper price than their rivals, so will tempt people in with a low base fare before adding lots of extras.

But I wonder, are they really doing themselves any favours, or are they turning away more people than they attract?

You have probably read that British Airways is currently being investigated over allegedly trying to fix the prices of fuel surcharges on certain routes.

That is a separate issue, but it prompted a survey into the different taxes, fees and charges levied by various airlines on several popular routes.

In some cases, these have doubled in the past three years. On the Gatwick to Barcelona route British Airways charged an extra £20.40 on top of its fare in November 2003, but this has now risen to £42.50. BA is not the only airline to impose ever-higher charges.

Ryanair, for example, famously boasts that it doesn’t have fuel supplements, but it does levy various charges of between £10 and £30 on most routes.

How do you feel about it? Would you like to see an end to this constant surcharging?

Guest Article by

Jeremy Skidmore

Monday, July 31st, 2006