Tip - Taking Advantage of a Legal Loophole: You Can Avoid Paying Fuel Surcharges on Award Tickets If You Know Where to Start and End the Trip - View from the Wing

Fuel surcharges are the bane of many frequent flyers, junk fees adding hundreds or even a thousand dollars onto award tickets by many frequent flyer programs around the world. Airlines like fuel surcharges because: Changing the fuel surcharge in a market can raise or lower every ticket price in that market, no need to re-file every single fare. They allow an airline to raise price even with many fixed-fare agreements. And, of course, because they can be charged to frequent flyers trying to redeem a captive points currency. US frequent flyers — who don’t participate in mileage programs based outside the US — don’t have to deal with fuel surcharges very much. American adds them to awards on British Airways (and to a very modest extent on Iberia) Alaska adds them to awards on British…