Air fare rip-offs !

The air fare war is a cut throat business. We have come a long way since the days of TAA and Ansett offering a duopoly of flights at identical seat prices. Not all entrants into discount airlines succeeded. We remember the demise of Compass and Impulse - but now we have Jetstar, Virgin and Tiger - with more to come very soon.

Selling seats on airplanes is a matter of smoke and mirrors. The advertised price is not what you actually pay. There are government taxes that get tacked onto the deal, and then various surcharges, including the elevated price of jet fuel.

Then there are the sneaky little price additions that the hard pressed discount airlines resort to so that they can pad out their seat prices in the hope of making a modest profit.

Way back in 2003 the law changed to allow traders to recover the cost of credit card transactions imposed by the banks to be passed on to customers. The costs were fairly moderate and the imposition on most transactions amounted to a few cents - and some traders didn't bother to impose them at all.

The profit strapped discount airlines saw a chance for a few more dollars - and started charging credit card costs on a per person - per flight basis.

So - if a family of four booked a holiday flight with the cost covered by a single credit card payment, the airline quadrupled it's fees. The cost to the airline remained that of a single transaction.

This transaction fee seems to be at the discretion of the airline concerned, and bears no relation to what the bank chooses to charge.

So - we have a situation where Jetstar demands $ 3 and Tiger $ 6 , per seat per flight to cover bank fees !

Multiply that by the number of family members travelling on the one booking, paid for by that single credit card payment - and the extra dollars add up !

The banks have recently had second thoughts about those " fines " they have been imposing for late payment and minor infringements of their " rules ".

About time the regulators lowered the boom on multiple charges for single transactions in the airline industry to remove this rip-off !