Fuel Surcharge - only invented to screw Frequent Flyers

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Slats

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Aug 21, 2006
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I have had a gut full of QANTAS cough. But their not alone, as other airlines scramble to so the same.

We all know world oil price increases mean higher operating costs. We all know that fuel is a staple input to all airlines.

Given this we pay a fuel surcharge, not and increase in ticket prices but a surcharge. Why? Well if QANTAS or any other airline increased ticket prices for full paying customers and did not have a surcharge, Frequent Flyers would not have to pay. But then again we have already paid in all those paid for flights we made to earn the points. So how about it QANTAS, I dare you to public come out and state what your private policy is, that you only have a fuel surcharge so you can milk your Frequent Flyers as the redeem flights.
 
Its even more complicated that this. Qantas gains by extracting fuel surcharges from FF members making award flight redemptions. So if they included the cost of fuel in the base fare price they would lose this revenue from FF members and would likely need to revise the FF points costs for FF award flights.

However, the other side of the story is that when a person books a QF flight through another airline (say using aa.com or purchasing an ATW fare from CX etc), the selling airline retains the fuel surcharges and QF only receives the base fare component.

Of course this works in QF's favour when people by a ticket on another airline through QF. On an ATW ticket, QF could earn many hundreds of dollars in fuel surcharges for flights operated by other airlines for which QF does not incur any fuel cost and does not pass the fuel surcharge onto the operating airline.

So in my mind the charging of fuel fines is not a user-pays situation for recovering extra fuel costs, and the only fair way is for all airlines to adjust their base fares to include the full cost of operational expenses such as fuel.
 
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