French low-cost airline promotes ticket re-sale scheme

Air France’s ‘low-cost’ brand Transavia has launched a ticket re-sale scheme that promises a refund of airport taxes – and possibly some of the fare itself – if someone else buys the ticket.

Under the Transavia offer, which launched in July, unwanted tickets are listed directly on the airline’s website and can be posted up to an hour before the flight takes off.

Transavia says that if the seat is bought by someone else, the amount refunded will cover at least the airport taxes and might rise to up to half the price paid for the ticket.

All Transavia flight tickets are eligible for resale, with certain exceptions, notably those booked within 12 hours of departure or within 72 hours of arrival.

To resell a ticket, the holder must click on the ‘My Transavia’ space, then ‘Resell your ticket’. Users have a choice to resell only the outward or return leg of a journey, or both. 

Rather than an exchange between private individuals, the resale transaction is carried out on Transavia’s own app or website in a secure way. 

The seller receives their refund directly on the payment method they originally used to buy it.

When asked for details, the company gave the example of a flight from Paris to Faro in southern Portugal, where tickets for three people were bought for €633, all taxes included.

The passengers found they could not make the flight and put the tickets on the buy-back platform, where they were purchased by someone else 20 days before the flight, leading to a €316.50 refund.

It has been possible to reclaim taxes d’aeroport (found under the code QW on tickets) and redevance passager (code QX) from airlines for some time in France.

To do so, you must write to the airline within a month of the flight you were booked on but did not take, and they should refund the taxes, minus a 20% administration fee.

In France, the taxes vary from airport to airport depending on size.

In 2025 it is €11 for passengers from Paris flying inside France and the Schengen Area, €12.11 for passengers flying to the UK and French overseas departments, and €27.88 for other destinations. 

Another airline ticket tax in France is the taxe de solidarité sur les billets d'avion, usually named the Chirac tax after the president who installed it with the promise that money raised would be used to buy medicines for people in developing countries.

Since then some of the tax has been diverted into the general tax pool – although the government says over €1billion of medicines has been sent to developing countries.

It is now €7.40 for flights in France and Europe in economy class, and €15 for other flights in economy class, rising to €40 for long haul flights.

On the rail network, SNCF also has a platform for the resale of Ouigo tickets, called Ouigoswap. This allows people who have tickets they cannot use to ‘sell’ them to other travellers, getting vouchers for future SNCF trips of up to 80% of the ticket price in return.

People who buy the ticket through the usual SNCF channels can sometimes get half-price fares.

If there are no buyers for the ticket, the seller does not receive anything.

There are a number of other websites in France that promise to resell travel tickets, especially train tickets where the security checks on passengers are less stringent than for air travel.

However, the reputation of these platforms is mixed – many ride on the back of ticket tout websites for music concerts – with some users complaining that after taking the time to register and fill out their details, there were no takers for their tickets.