How airlines boost their income at the consumers' expense

Ticket refunds:In most areas of business, consumers are entitled to a refund, full or partial, if they decide not to use a service. The refund for a cancelled hotel room, for example, will depend on how early the cancellation was made.

Airlines don't give refunds for ordinary tickets.

They will allow you change your flight dates, but they'll probably charge you more for doing so, even though this process is automated and instant.

 Refunds of charges and fees:

Airlines collect charges from passengers on behalf of airports and governments, and most of these charges are not payable if we don't fly. So what happens the money?

Ryanair only refunds government taxes upon a passenger's request and within a month of the travel date. However, the refund is subject to a "reasonable" but undefined "administration fee".

In practice, this is about €€20 per passenger, not per booking. In most cases, this fee exceeds the amount due, so the customer gets nothing - if he or she even bothers to seek a refund.

Aer Lingus adopts a similar approach to refunding government taxes, and fails to define its "reasonable"administration fee.

Air travellers pay airport, security and passenger charges, many of them ill-defined, and there is a strong legal case for these being refunded to non-travelling customers, according to the European Consumer Centre office in Dublin.

Wheelchair levy:

Ryanair collects more than €€20 million a year by charging its passengers 50 cent per flight for this levy. The airline claims it carries 1.5 million people with disabilities each year, although it is hard to see how this could be, given its policy of carrying no more than four people with disabilities on any one flight. The vast majority of airports serviced by Ryanair provide a free wheelchair service.

The EU has banned the levy with effect from July 2008.

 Price transparency:

Consumer officials in Ireland and elsewhere are looking at what one describes as "unexplained differences" between the amounts some airlines are charging customers and what they are paying in charges to airports.

Optional charges:

Allegedly "optional" charges for insurance and baggage can be fiendishly hard to dodge. I thought I was the only person who ended up buying unneeded travel insurance from Ryanair until I discovered dozens of others who fell into the same pitfall. Regulators in Ireland and the UK want airlines to change their websites so that customers have to "opt in" to such charges, rather than having to find a way to "opt out".

Charging per passenger:

Debit and credit card surcharges and administration fees are levied per passenger and per flight, not per booking. Thus, a party of six travelling with Ryanair ends up paying €€36 as a handling fee.