Had to cancel your flight? Guide to getting the taxes back.

Taxes on flights are a nice little money-earner for airlines – not only does the customer pay the tax on the flight weeks or months ahead, but if there’s a cancellation the airline gets to sell the ticket again and keeps the tax from the first sale!

Trying to find the info on any airline website on how to claim your tax back is usually a near impossible task. Phoning the customer service department is also a weary experience, with no guarantee of success. However, airlines cannot refuse to return the tax to the customer, but what they can insist upon is the payment of an administration fee, which can be per reservation, per ticket or per flight. Depending on the airline, sometimes this fee is set at abusive rates resulting in it not being worthwhile.

Given that fighting with an airline can be a time-consuming business, there are a couple of websites that can take the headache out of getting your tax back:

• Re-ticket.com This site charges a 15€ flat fee for the request eg if you have 4 tickets for your family, you’ll only be charged once. You’ll need to send all the relevant documents and your bank account details by e-mail. However, they can’t help you if your flight was reserved with Ryanair, FlyBE or Easyjet. Additionally this website offers a ticket re-selling service if you can’t use your ticket.
• MissRefund This site offers a “no-win, no-fee” service, but does charge 25€ upfront!

For general information regarding air passenger duty, this link from HM Revenue & Customs (applicable rates in the UK), shows how airlines choose to pass on the tax to the passenger and that this is only payable when the flight actually takes off (page 1, paragraph 6):

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/pbr2008/pbrn20.pdf

The report also shows how much air passenger duty is payable on each flight leaving from a UK airport, which depends on both the distance and the class of travel. This could help when deciding whether to claim back the tax or not.

Important note: MoneySaverSpain has not tried either of the websites mentioned in this article – please see our full Terms & Conditions regarding the use of third-party websites.