

Misrepresentation of Fuel Surcharges in Airline Price Advertising - danielsiders
http://www.benedelman.org/airfare-advertising/

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ams6110
Splintering the total cost into fare and various taxes, surcharges, and fees
is likely an attempt to make direct price comparisons with competitors more
difficult. I.e. advertising the base "fare" and only revealing the additional
charges at purchase time. Wireless providers, cable/internet companies, etc.
all do it too.

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gatehouse
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly)

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pedalpete
I just did some back of the napkin calculations on actual fuel costs for the
reported BOS-LHR. I find the OPs description difficult to follow, but assuming
a 777 from BOS-LHR

6000 gallons / hour of flight

$3 / gallon (currently $2.92)

550 passengers / flight

6 hours flight time

Results in an actual fuel cost of $193.36.

I'm quite surprised to see that fuel really is a significant price of the
total cost of a flight. I always thought the Fuel Surcharge thing was B.S.

However, I disagree that it should be allowed to be separated from the cost of
the flight. The airline isn't buying the fuel the day you buy your ticket or
the day you fly, they're buying the fuel the day they schedule the flight via
futures (or if they aren't ,they should be). It also isn't something out of
the ordinary in the day to day business. Here in Australia their is 'public
holiday surcharges' where you have to pay a surcharge on public holidays
because businesses have to pay their employees more.

There should be requirements on what can be permitted to be placed as a
'surcharge'. As I see it, there is nothing stopping an airline from doing a
complete 'a la carte' offering where every item of your ticket is broken out
as a separate charge, but unfortunately, you don't have the option to opt-out
of any of it.

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dredmorbius
Fuel _is_ the principle cost of aviation, and fuel prices have climbed
markedly.

In looking at the "Boeing biofuel breakthrough" a couple of days ago, I
happened to look at what actual fuel consumption for the US airline industry
has been. Turns out that, although total _passenger miles_ is up since 2000,
the fuel consumption for the commercial aviation industry (which may include
cargo flights) peaked in 2000. The actual fuel usage for 2012 -52.3% of the
2000 FAA estimated consumption -- they'd predicted 3-4% annual growth over the
next 10 years, it turned out to be a 15.9% reduction over the period.

Increased load factors (the seats filled on a flight -- increased from 70-83%)
and reduced seat pitch (more seats, and passengers, per plane) seem to have
staved off an actual reduction in the passenger-miles, but I strongly suspect
that by plane-miles flown, we're down net.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1wo2hl/boeings_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1wo2hl/boeings_biofuel_breakthrough_less_than/)

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Titanous
The DOT ruled[1] against AA and fined them a whole $60,000 after a
complaint[2] from Edelman.

[1] [http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=DOT-
OST-2013-0...](http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=DOT-
OST-2013-0024-0032)

[2] [http://www.benedelman.org/airfare-
advertising/americanairlin...](http://www.benedelman.org/airfare-
advertising/americanairlines.html#complaint)

~~~
cabalamat
That's a whole 47 seconds revenue! I'm sure they'll be suitably chastened.

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martingordon
I first came across this when I tried to redeem some of my 100k miles I
accumulated on British Airways from business travel (at the time AA/BA didn't
give AAdvantage miles for transatlantic flights on BA).

Almost any time I try to book an award ticket, I'm hit with, for example, an
$800 ticket that "costs" $250 with $550 in fuel surcharges. This results in
award tickets that cost 50,000 miles + $550. Definitely not worth it and not
what I was expecting when I signed up.

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bedelman
You should consider filing a formal comment with DOT about your experience,
and especially your surprise at the unexpected charges. This is
straightforward using the Comment Now button on
[http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=DOT-
OST-2013-0...](http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=DOT-
OST-2013-0025-0001) . DOT is currently evaluating my complaint against BA on
this subject.

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judk
Ultimately, calling it "tax" isn't really the problem.

Not including nationally standard costs in national advertising is the
problem.

