Fuel Up Again

Fuel Surcharge up £6 to £32.50 per sector.

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,3 ... 48,00.html

When does a surcharge become part of the ticket price?

It seems strange to me that the airline industry continues to be able to offer low(ish) fares and then lump on a (generally) unadvertised fuel surcharges on an ongoing basis.

Now don't get me wrong if an airline sets a fare when gas is price x and it then goes up to 1.5x then they should be allowed to charge more than their previously advertised fares - and they are. But this should be by increasing the price of the goods not by continually adding a surcharge. It seems ironic that these surcharges just keep increasing - surely at some point you are paying a large percentage of the fuel costs through the surcharge. I don't know about anyone else but generally when I pay for an airfare I expect that for that price I'm paying for enough fuel to get me there - not 90% of the way.

If I was to roll into my local filling station and load up with £30 of gas then I expect to pay £30 - if they tried charging me an additional £5 because of increase costs from their supplier I would quite rightly smell something a little too ripe.

All these taxes and surcharges that vary by airline just tend to make it more difficult for Joe Public to identify the truly cheap fares. Is it not about time that all airlines operated a level playing field and are outlawed from adding fuel surcharges?

Phil (Buffy)

BuffyTVS65, I couldn't agree more. Well said[y][y]

Originally posted by BuffyTVS65
All these taxes and surcharges that vary by airline just tend to make it more difficult for Joe Public to identify the truly cheap fares. Is it not about time that all airlines operated a level playing field and are outlawed from adding fuel surcharges?

I'm not wishing to defend the practice, but I suspect that the reason that airlines use 'surcharges' in order to extract greater revenue to compensate for (what they hope to be transient) rises in fuel costs is that the base ticket prices are regulated by the IATA. This is what causes base fares to so closely correspond from one airline to another. I would imagine that changing these base fares would require discussions with the IATA and agreement from other airlines - who would then follow suit.

Charging for fuel as a surcharge on top of the base fare allows the airlines to vary the charge without consultation. The fact that their headline prices usually don't include taxes and surcharges also allows the prices to look good in advertisements of course, but consumers are already wising up to this and I'm sure the airlines realise that this will eventually look pretty bad from a PR point of view.

If the 'surcharge' is a temporary measure (assuming you expect that the underlying fuel costs will eventually go down) then it is perhaps better this way as it means the charge can be removed as easily at it is added. If it becomes a permanent feature however, then - in my opinion - it should certainly be rolled into the base fares. The situation at present - where surcharges and taxes can exceed 50% of the base fare on cheaper fares - is ludicrous.

Regards,
BArry

Hmm see today that the price of oil is down to a three month low. Wonder if Virgin, or any other airline for that matter, will drop the last £6 fuel surcharge increase, or whether as I suspect they're now addicted to the revenue and hoping pax forget it!

I've noticed that BA's online booking engine now includes all taxes and fees in the prices that are displayed when you are selecting flights.

You then get the breakdown of base airfare, taxes, surcharges and fees, when you've finished selecting your flights.

I think this is a fairer system.

Cheers,
Mike

Originally posted by mike-smashing
I've noticed that BA's online booking engine now includes all taxes and fees in the prices that are displayed when you are selecting flights.

You then get the breakdown of base airfare, taxes, surcharges and fees, when you've finished selecting your flights.

I think this is a fairer system.

Cheers,
Mike

agreed. Ryanair should learn about this too! [n]

Originally posted by mike-smashing
I've noticed that BA's online booking engine now includes all taxes and fees in the prices that are displayed when you are selecting flights.

You then get the breakdown of base airfare, taxes, surcharges and fees, when you've finished selecting your flights.

I think this is a fairer system.

Cheers,
Mike

That has to be a better way. I must admit to feeling conned when I get to the end of a booking to be told "BTW there's another £80 to pay". I can see the logic of keeping surcharges and taxes separate. Apart from IATA, it prevents the airline having to foot the charges themselves on cheap/free flights (rewards for eg). It also keeps them separate so that they are treated as a fixed cost when airlines are working out all their normal discounting. But lets have the gross fares quoted when we are trying to shop around. With other purchases it is normal to include taxes in the quoted price unless the purchaser would normally be able to recover those taxes. This is why a Whiskey is quoted including VAT (and duty), whereas office stationary is quoted net of VAT. In the case of air tickets the surcharges and taxes cannot be recovered by anyone, AFAIK. So quote the gross price please!

BTW, slightly OT but related. I have always had a similar mental struggle with airport taxes as Buffy does with fuel surcharges. When I bought the ticket I really was expecting that we would be using a runway and terminal at either end. So how come at the end of my trip to China (for eg) I have to make sure I hold back 100RMB to give to some mardy woman behind a glass screen at the airport. True, China have stopped this now and charge the tax to the airlines, which is a bit of an improvement. But the principle is the same - is this not really part of the ticket price.

A surcharge/tax is still payable on departure from Bangkok. From memory it was 500 bahts and was collected by a private company on behalf of the Thai Goverment. A nice little earner for the company even if they only got 10%;)[:$]