Jetstar’s new credit card surcharges: Cheapest of the major airlines
Credit card bookings now score a 1.06% surcharge.
Like every other airline in Australia, from today Jetstar has to switch from charging a fixed fee for using credit cards to a percentage-based fee that more accurately reflects its own costs. The fees it has announced are the lowest of the four major Australian airlines.
Prior to today, Jetstar charges $8.50 per person per sector for credit card bookings. You could avoid that fee by paying with a Jetstar Mastercard, or by using POLi.
From today, you'll pay a percentage fee on the total booking cost if you use a credit or debit card. Here are the details:
| Card type | % charge |
|---|---|
| Mastercard Credit | 1.06% |
| Mastercard Debit | 1.06% |
| Visa Credit | 0.48% |
| Visa Debit | 0.48% |
| PayPal | 0.75% |
The free options (using a Jetstar Mastercard or POLi remain in place). Jetstar's PayPal model uses a percentage, while rival budget carrier Tigerair charges a fixed fee for PayPal.
The new surcharges will be a much cheaper option than the $8.50 for most domestic flights, even when you take into account that the percentage applies to the full fare. You'd have to spend more than $800 on a one-way fare for the $8.50 option to have been cheaper – a possibility with some Star Class fares to overseas destinations, but unlikely otherwise.
One annoyance: flights on Jetstar Asia still attract the $8.50 fee, since they're not covered by Australian regulations. If your flight number starts with 3Q rather than JQ, that's the fee you'll pay (again, you can dodge this by using a Jetstar Mastercard.
Similar changes have been introduced by Qantas, Virgin and Tigerair, while Rex already uses a percentage-based surcharge model. However, the percentages charged by those airlines are all slightly higher than Jetstar.
Picture: TK Kurikawa / Shutterstock.com
