Jet fuel's down, but surcharges have stuck
— -- Thai Airways' cheapest Los Angeles-Bangkok ticket last week had a $542 fuel surcharge round trip — $352 more than the airline charged a year ago.
The least expensive ticket between Washington, D.C., and Tokyo on All Nippon Airways carried a $630 fuel surcharge, and that was $400 more than a year ago.
Despite lower jet-fuel prices, fuel surcharges on international tickets are much higher than a year ago, according to an analysis of airline fare data for USA TODAY. Surcharges on many tickets have doubled, and many tickets on shorter flights — which often burn less fuel — have higher surcharges than longer-distance flights.
Most round-trip international tickets still have surcharges ranging from $200 to more than $500, even after airlines lowered the surcharges by $20 to $70 on many U.S.-Europe tickets last week. U.S. domestic fares still carry fuel surcharges, too, but international fares have the highest ones.
Meanwhile, the price of jet fuel in New York last Tuesday fell to $2.32 per gallon and averaged $2.35 on four previous weekdays, according to the most recent Department of Energy statistics. Those prices are lower than the price on Oct. 22, 2007, and about the same as the average price in September 2007.
"All the noise about airlines rolling back their fuel surcharges to pre-oil-crisis levels is a bunch of hooey," says Rick Seaney, CEO of FareCompare.com, which tracks airfares for consumers.
Airlines' views vs. travelers'
Airlines say the surcharges added during the past year did not cover their costs when fuel prices were much higher and that collectively, they still will lose billions of dollars this year. "The price of fuel has risen significantly for months and dropped only recently," says David Castelveter, vice president of the Air Transport Association of America, an airline trade group. "We are far from being out of the woods."
However, the fuel fees, combined with new service fees and increases in airfares, infuriate many travelers.
The surcharges are "a simple money grab by the airlines," says frequent flier Ron Goltsch, an electrical engineer in Parsippany, N.J. "They think we have become so used to seeing surcharges that they think they can add them on with impunity."
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