point fu

Both Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airlines base their fuel surcharges on jet fuel price indices (as I pointed out last year ). They've just announce d that the surcharges are being slashed by 60% for tickets issued in April and May. According to NHK, they review the surcharge rates every two months. This should bring the copay on their super-affordable Economy reward tickets back down to the $100 range.

I've complained for years that British Airways Avios are nearly worthless given the criminally-high surcharges they tack on to reward tickets. Well, a class-action lawsuit about it has finally reached a settlement and I'm getting $273.84 back ! They also offered me the option of getting 12,500 Avios instead, but since the terrible surcharges are still there (just with a new name) I'd rather take the money.  Near as I can tell, the suit hinged on the idea they called their surcharges "fuel surcharges", when in fact they had nothing to do with fuel prices. So if you had a reward ticket with BA between 9 November, 2006 and 17 April, 2013 (i.e., during the time the charges had the misleading name) you should have received an email with your unique login info to view your personal settlement. The email likely ended up in your Spam folder , so go take a peek there if you didn't get one. The sender is: info@fuelsurchargeclassaction.com , the subject is Dove...

Hooray! Another airline is lowering their fuel surcharges! Starting at the end of February Singapore Airlines is lowering theirs . ANA, JAL , and British Airways have all made similar announcements. With all of the recent point devaluations, it's nice to get some good news for a change.

Airlines buy long-term fuel contracts to prevent the pain that can happen when prices temporarily spike. But fuel prices have been trending down for quite some time and people are starting to get crabby about the charges still being so high. British Airways is being sued by its frequent flier members over it. Some good news, though: both ANA and JAL are lowering theirs. Since most reward tickets require you to pay the fuel surcharge in cash, it's a huge deal to people who fly like I do. BA's fuel charges are so high, you're basically paying for an Economy class ticket's worth of "fuel" when you redeem miles, so redeeming for Economy is absolutely pointless. Not quite worth it...