The foggy lingo of taxes on air tickets

Mumbai: Ever wondered what fees like JN, WO, YQ and XT on your air ticket mean, and why, added to the base fare, they send your airfare streaking into stratosphere. The odd alphabetical pairings have left the Directorate General of Civil Aviation scratching its head as well.
The issue of lack of transparency in air tariffs was brought up this month by Sudhakara Reddy in the first ever meeting of the Civil Aviation Economic Advisory Council.
A December 14 Jet Konnect ticket came at a base fare of Rs 2,250, but cost Reddy Rs 6,282 because of the mysterious heads of IN, JN and XT in between.
The other, more transparent, ticket bought on IndiGo Airlines for the same date coupled the base fare with the fuel charge to give an initial price of Rs 5,319. It then added passenger service fee (Rs 229), transaction charge (Rs 500), service tax (Rs 103) and user development fee (Rs 200), forcing the final tariff to balloon to Rs 6,351.
Though gobbledygook on the ticket, the lingo is demystified on Jet Airways' website. According to the site, JN stands for service tax, WO for passenger service fee and IN for user development fee.
Director general of civil aviation Bharat Bhushan said: "We are looking into the issue."
Reddy also criticised IndiGo for charging a transaction fee for tickets bought online — a practice also followed by Spice Jet and Go Air, though Go Air calls it merely "services". Aside from the transaction fee, Go Air passengers also need to pay Rs 129 as insurance fee.
All domestic airlines in India play the obfuscatory game by adding into one sum the base fare, the fuel charge and the airline congestion charge. Though a requirement of the DGCA, it makes cancelling a non-refundable ticket more troublesome.
01/12/10 Manhu V/Times of India

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Jan 2011