Why am I being charged £220 to fly to Tenerife?
Simon Calder answers your questions on the Canary Islands, Esta red tape and costly errors
Q Why have easyJet prices gone mad: £220 to fly to Tenerife, with £100 more on top if taking a suitcase?
Johnny S
A I am not sure that £220 is a particularly excessive fare for a flight of more than 1,800 miles. My back-of-a-boarding card calculation (with help from easyJet’s published accounts) is that the average seat on the average easyJet flight last year cost the carrier £70. The length of the average flight: 742 miles. That is 10.6p per mile. While there is certainly not a linear relationship between cost and distance, the cost of that seat to the Canary Islands is certainly above £100. On many dates this winter, easyJet is charging far less than that: Gatwick to Tenerife for £23 one-way on 20 March, for example.
Britain’s biggest budget airline will certainly do its best to extract more from each passenger, from advance seat selection (minimum £7) via a bigger cabin bag (£32) to a checked 26kg case (£52). These optional extras come at little or no marginal cost to easyJet but can turn an unprofitable flight into one that makes money.
You, though, are facing a fare almost 10 times higher than that lowest £23 fare. I presume this is because you are travelling at a time of peak demand. I can detect it is not the morning flight of the first Saturday of the main school holidays in England and Wales, 23 July, because that is currently selling at £315 (with only four seats at that price). But whenever you plan to travel, the problem is not easyJet – it’s other travellers, bidding up the price of a journey.
Economists might say, a little harshly, that this is the market doing what it does best: allocating scarce resources to those whose desire is strongest (and whose pockets are deepest). Others are priced out.
Assuming your journey is personally essential, what can you do? The more flexible you are with timing, the lower the fare. And if circumstances dictate that the £220 flight is the one you must take, then simply go cabin-baggage only. Tenerife is mainly sunny and warm, and washing a T-shirt and underwear while there is hardly a chore if it saves you £100.
Finally, I felt your pain last weekend when easyJet charged me £440 for a one-way flight from Hurghada to Gatwick, hand luggage only. But the trip was safe and punctual, and no one forced me to take the flight.
Q In November you said anyone who has travelled to Cuba since 2011 does not qualify for an Esta. You mentioned that it was expected to be changed to 2021 soon. Do you have any further information on this?
Sam Wood
A First the background: Donald Trump’s final act against Cuba as US president took place in January 2021.
The outgoing US leader placed the island on Washington DC’s list of “state sponsors of terrorism” (SST) alongside Iran, North Korea and Syria. His successor, Joe Biden, has left this rather nonsensical designation in place. As a result, the US State Department insists, British visitors to America who have visited Cuba since 1 March 2011 cannot use the swift, cheap and relatively easy Esta system for permission to travel to the US.
Instead they must spend $160 (£132) on a full visa – and attend an interview at the US Embassy in London or the Consulate-General in Belfast, for which appointments are hard to obtain.
Confusion has reigned, with several leading travel firms insisting the backdated sanctions apply only from the “designation date”, 12 January 2021. Many travellers with evidence of a visit to Cuba in their passport before that date have reported that they have been allowed to enter the US without a problem. Anecdotally, US Customs & Border Protection officers are turning a blind eye on some occasions. But this cannot be relied upon.
The State Department stipulates: “Any visit to an SST on or after 1 March 2011, even if the country was designated yesterday, renders the applicant ineligible for Esta.” You might not even get on the plane with a Cuba stamp in your passport. Some passengers have been turned away from airports because they are regarded by the airlines as inadmissible to the US.
In informal discussions with officials late last year, I was given the strong indication that an imminent adjustment would be made to the policy to make the Esta ban retrospective only as far as 12 January 2021. But it hasn’t happened. Until it does, all I can do is repeat the US State Department’s insistence and note that if there is no evidence in a current passport of a visit to Cuba, it is difficult to see how the Americans would know a traveller had ever been to the island.
Q My girlfriend and I have booked flights costing £1,600 each via an online travel agent. However, my surname is incorrect on the booking – it is my girlfriend’s surname. Given in error. The agent and airline say they are unable to change the name and so we must cancel the booking with no refund and are set to lose a significant amount. Is there anything we can do?
Connor H
A How infuriating. What was clearly an honest mistake should not cost you well over £1,000. The online travel agent and the airline are talking nonsense when they say they cannot change the name. In reality, they stand to make a tidy amount of money at your expense by invoking the rule: “We will carry you only if you are the passenger named in the ticket.”
Luckily you can swerve their onerous penalty, so long as you have a bit of time on your hands. Change your name to your girlfriend’s last name and obtain a new passport in that name. You can do this by using an “unenrolled deed poll” (effectively a self-declaration saying you wish to be known by a new name). Then change your name with a utility company so that you get a bill in the new name. You will need to send both documents in to support your passport application. Once you come back from your trip, you can reverse the procedure and revert to your own name (or just stay using your girlfriend’s last name for the purposes of travel).
Yes, it will cost you around £160 and some faff, but it will save you 90 per cent of the money you have invested. The fact that you are having to do this shows how ridiculous the airline’s rules are – and how unhelpful is your online travel agent. A good human travel agent will ask you either to bring in the passports so they can check the names (and validity) or ask you by phone to read out the exact names from the passports themselves. Clearly, this would have picked up the potential name issue before it became an expensive problem.
For future reference, I get more complaints about the shortcomings of online travel agents than I do about any other subject.
Email your question to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder
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