you have to claim them back through the airline through whom you booked..if package through th travel agent [as that is who your contact is with

wizard

Hi Wiz how do you do this?do we have to cancel the flight first and then write a letter. The flight is with jet2 and was wondering because it is a no frills airline if we can still claim the taxes back. My hubby booked a ticket for a friend & they have had a difference of opinion and now he is not going, the ticket is in his friends name but paid for by my hubby & the confirmation was sent to our email address. Any help would be appreciated. Cheers Jayjan

Your big problem may be admin charges. I do remember hearing on the BBC radio 4 the "You and yours" program about certain airlines that were charging more in admin charges than the actual taxes we can all guess the worst one for it. It wasn't Jet2 but they were not mentioned on the report.

as the collecting officer on behalf of HM gov they are obliged to refund taxes paid when the flight is cancelled, not sure about a fee for doing so but i don't think that would pass muster with the gov.. if they did,

write to the airline with a copy of either the cancelled tickets or receipt on which they were purchased ask for a full refund in accordance with current legislation [let them look it up if they want to argue] to be paid in 28 days from date of letter

wizard

I know the original question was about Jet2 but in answer to the question if they airline can apply an admin charge well Ryanair think they can.
heres what Ryanair say
http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/faqs.php?sect=chg&quest=unusedflight

Just done a bit of digging on the Jet2 web site and they claim they will not pay back taxes. See terms and conditions 9.1 in attached link. I make no comment on the legality just providing the information.

http://www.jet2.com/Terms.aspx

Thanks Colin, It is wrong that they dont refund the taxes back, but also the administration fees can also be as much as the refund plus the phone calls which are 50p a minute so we will end up getting nothing so we've kicked it into touch.. I found an article from The Guardian saying that the research they did on refunding taxes, it seemed that Monarch are one of the only airlines that will refund taxes without any admin charges applied. I also found that the taxes paid to the government are calculated on total passenger numbers using the airline (I am understanding this is portrayed an annual figure) and not individual flights to a certain destination on a certain day.
How much money must they be making on cancelled flights when people never bother to try and claim the taxes back because of the hassle or cost involved. I would have thought they are legally obliged to refund the money, but seems not so. Cheers Jayjan

I would have thought they are legally obliged to refund the money, but seems not so.

They are legally obliged to refund the money but they are also legally allowed to charge you an admin fee for changing the booking regardless of the reason for now wanting cancel. Whether they do decide to charge or not is really up to them. If your reason for cancelling is something that would be covered by your travel insurance then you might find that the insurance company will payout on the admin charge but many policies have an excess that means it not worth claiming for such an amount. The only way to avoid these sort of admin charges is to pay for a full price open ticket with one of the full service carriers which ends up being very costly. In the end I think that if one chooses to book with a bargain bucket airline then you're going to lose money on any changes to the original booking.