Paying for AP's flights

[Millarkie]

Our lovely AP has just rung to say that she missed her flight back to England (not her fault, major problems on the long road trip to the airport).
She has already made arrangements to take a train across Germany tomorrow to catch another flight which will get her here by the evening. She is really upset that she missed the flight and we are very grateful that she immediately sorted out a way to get back here, even though she is only coming back for the next 2 weeks.
DH and I would like to repay her for the extra train journey and flight (we haven't paid for any of her flights so far, wasn't part of our 'deal' ) - any advice on the best way of doing this?

I guess I could give her the amount in GBP but she is only here 2 more weeks, and doesn't have a UK bank account so I guess she would have to lose out by transferring it back into Euros, would a bank transfer into a Euro account be better?
Any way to get around the exchange rate loss?

If you transfer funds from a sterling account to a euro account... does your bank charge you a fee?
May find you get a better exchange rate withdrawing cash and going to the postoffice to convert it to Euro's.
Either way you will still be giving your AP Euro's... but one may give a better currency conversion, less admin fees.

Can you not pay for the flight from here and just give her the reference number to turn up at the airport with?

Transferring money into a european bank account is painful and expensive.

Why can't you just take euros out of the bank in cash for the amount that your AP is out of pocket?

Nick - um..don't know if we would get charged a fee for bank transfer..and really difficult to get to a PO round here, but will look into it.

Jura - that's cool! We are sort of HSBC - will look into that.

DIOM - she had already booked and paid for her replacement flight and train ticket before she rang us to say she had missed the flight. It seems once they realised that the traffic jam that they were in was likely to make her miss the flight they contacted her flatmate by mobile phone and he found the flight/train details which (after arriving the first flight's time had passed) she got him to book tickets using her mum's credit card (her mum was in the car with her and said it was ok).
As I said, she wasn't expecting us to pay the fares but we are so impressed that she is still bothering to come back - we don't see why her mum should have to pay for the extra flight etc.

BonsoirAnna - because that would involve maths

Thanks all, will see if we can take Euros straight out of the bank and otherwise will be looking up fees on bank transfers.

I just hope she gets her flight tonight!

yup, the exchange rate is scarey isn't it! flight+train was 170 euros, um...so that'll be 170 pounds then

I think you dont pay any fee for amount up to 2,000 euro