Questions and Answers

I was pricing an award ticket from Chennai (India ) to London Heathrow on BA and found that BA has started to charge GST to the award tickets. As you may be aware, the Indian government has started implementing GST as of July 1st and as far as the airline tickets are concerned it is 5% for Economy and 12% for business class tickets.

The award ticket from Chennai costs 62500 Avios and $256.81 before whereas now the same ticket costs 62500 Avios and $685.89 ( of which $454.80 is Goods And Service Tax – India ). When priced through AA for the same flight, I don’t get charged the GST. The same is true using United miles on Lufthansa and Air India. BA charges GST for all one world partners out of India, even on Cathay Pacific where fuel charges are not added to the ticket.

Have you come across this issues while booking awards for your clients?
Thanks Ben

Naveen

Your two examples where the tax is not included are US-based airlines while BA is in Europe. I wonder if other European airlines are including this tax but I don’t have enough M&M miles to check Lufthansa.

And, as we know, BA just loves to pass along all the taxes & fees they can which is why we typically try to avoid flying on them longhaul!