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> My last trip to London from SFO, according to the ticket fare breakdown, fees were more than 1/2 the ticket. Probably closer to 60%. I would love to see every

by objclxt 13y ago

> My last trip to London from SFO, according to the ticket fare breakdown, fees were more than 1/2 the ticket. Probably closer to 60%. I would love to see every line item. If you were flying a UK airline they were probably counting the "fuel surcharge" as a fee, which in many cases can be the majority of the ticket. I just priced up the cheapest SFO-LHR return on Virgin next month, it came in at $1000, with $458 being "carrier imposed surcharges", counted as fees. Except they're not fees at all, it's the 'fuel surcharge'. Actual taxes and fees were $233, or 23%. Your airline should have given you a link to the line by line breakdown of every item ($5 custom fee, $2.50 TSA fee, etc) when you bought the ticket. On a related note, if you're flying from SFO you're not actually interacting with the TSA itself at all, San Francisco is one of the few airports that contracts out security screening to a TSA-approved company (some people think SFO has more 'friendly' security screening because of it, I haven't really noticed).

jmspring 13y ago
It was a company purchased ticket, I can probably dig it up...but by fees, I was lumping in surcharges, as you state. One way my wife and I have helped deal with some of the line hassle -- GOES (for coming back into the country), Clear (had it before PreCheck came about and will reevaluate), and now PreCheck (GOES helped with this). I've heard some mention that as more and more people become PreCheck eligible, that will become the norm rather than the exception. We shall see. With regard to SFO not being TSA, I'm aware of this and generally have found them much more efficient than the TSA. Probably my best TSA experiences have been in Seattle (recently) and Kona, friendly and generally laughing. Worst opt out experience was actually SFO w/ a manager who took exception to anyone opting out and waited 10+ min before calling someone over -- "The delay is to encourage you to go through the machines".

by objclxt 13y ago

jmspring 13y ago

It was a company purchased ticket, I can probably dig it up...but by fees, I was lumping in surcharges, as you state. One way my wife and I have helped deal with some of the line hassle -- GOES (for coming back into the country), Clear (had it before PreCheck came about and will reevaluate), and now PreCheck (GOES helped with this). I've heard some mention that as more and more people become PreCheck eligible, that will become the norm rather than the exception. We shall see. With regard to SFO not being TSA, I'm aware of this and generally have found them much more efficient than the TSA. Probably my best TSA experiences have been in Seattle (recently) and Kona, friendly and generally laughing. Worst opt out experience was actually SFO w/ a manager who took exception to anyone opting out and waited 10+ min before calling someone over -- "The delay is to encourage you to go through the machines".