Taxes, charges and booking fees: what is included in the reimbursement?

Under Article 8(1), where a flight is cancelled the operating air carrier must offer a choice: reimbursement, re-routing at the earliest opportunity, or re-routing at a later date. If you choose reimbursement, it is Article 8(1)(a) that governs, and three things follow from its wording.

The starting point is the full cost of the ticket at the price at which it was bought, not a net price, not an internal ticket value. The reimbursement covers the part or parts of the journey not made, and also the part or parts already made if the flight is no longer serving any purpose in relation to your original travel plan. The time limit is seven days.

The form is governed by Article 7(3), to which Article 8(1)(a) expressly refers: in cash, by electronic bank transfer, bank orders or bank cheques, or in travel vouchers and/or other services, but then only with your signed agreement. A travel voucher you have not given your signed agreement to is therefore not a reimbursement within the meaning of the Regulation.

Many tickets are bought through a booking site that adds a fee of its own. Whether that fee belongs to the ticket price to be reimbursed was decided by the Eighth Chamber of the Court of Justice on 12 September 2018 in Case C-601/17, Harms and Others v Vueling Airlines SA.

The Court's answer: the price of the ticket to be taken into consideration for the purposes of determining the reimbursement includes the difference between the amount paid by the passenger and the amount received by the air carrier, that is, the intermediary's commission. There is a proviso. The commission is not to be counted in if it was set without the knowledge of the air carrier, and the Court left that assessment to the national court.

In practice the judgment means that what you paid is the reference point, not what the airline took in. If you paid the booking site more than the carrier received, the difference may be covered, but the airline can object to precisely that item, if the fee was set without its knowledge.

If you cancel the booking yourself, or fail to show up, it is not the airline that has cancelled the flight. Article 8(1)(a) then does not apply, and what happens to the ticket price is governed instead by the ticket conditions. Sweden's Consumer Agency is clear that there is no statutory right of withdrawal when you book a flight, and that the airline's own conditions apply, but that the journey can be cancelled.

On taxes and charges, the guidance comes from Sweden's Consumer Agency: it states that air tax is to be paid back whatever the ticket type, and that you are also to get back those charges the airline does not have to pay because you are not travelling. The agency states at the same time that the airline may charge a cost for making the refund, but only if that is set out in the conditions.

Sweden itself no longer has an air passenger tax: the Act on tax on air travel (2017:1200) was repealed with effect from 1 July 2025 (SFS 2024:1138), and no Swedish air tax is levied on departures from that date. So check your booking or receipt to see which taxes and charges are actually included in your price.

What the Consumer Agency is addressing, then, is air tax and charges the airline does not have to pay when you do not travel. The agency says nothing equivalent about the carrier's own ticket price or a booking site's service fee: there the conditions govern, and those items do not fall away by themselves when you stay at home.