BA fuel surcharge even when you aren't using their planes
 

We are pricing reward tix from AUS/CDG and we wanted to fly AA because BA's "free" tickets are so expensive. I plugged in the dates to BA's web site and in addition to the usual taxes they are charging $210 each way per ticket as a fuel surcharge. I called to make sure this is right and they said yes, they do charge this even for AA flights. I asked for an explanation as to why they can charge this since we are not using any of their planes. Of course I didn't get a straight answer.

When I entered the same dates into AA's web site they only charge for taxes, which came to around $70/ticket. Sadly we do not have enough points to make this trip on AA.

Can anyone offer any insight as to why BA is charging extra for fuel they are not even purchasing?

Because they can. Many people jumped at their "free" 100,000 mi. credit card offers over the past couple of years, unaware that BA uses fuel surcharges as a very reliable and lucrative secondary source of income.

Some routes/carriers do not draw YQ (fuel surcharge) penalties when using BA miles; unfortunately none of them are for transatlantic travel as far as I know. Travel on partners to Asia, or US/North America routes operated by American Airlines, and I believe routes to South America operated by AA or Lan, do not get dinged for fuel fines. Caveat emptor.

My wife and I got 2 BA.com Amex CCs 20000 miles

Got 4 free TA flights out of it or so we thought

thought we were set till we ran into the "fuel surcharges"

which are charged regardless of oil price below $80 last

a rip they also charged for seat assigns we ended up paying

$200 or so apiece for each flight extra.

We figured we save more than 50% but this is so

dysethical they are my transport of last resort.

Recently we got 2 AA.com CCs 80000 miles total

2 free TA flight except for $100 of tax/fees each no fuel

charges free seats might try for the AA CCs if time

otherwise suck it up we did and still saved a lot.

Good luck!

one more thought for you

airasia.com flys dirt cheap from Oz via KUL on sales

might price that save your points...

We save a lot on hotels with FF points most recently

bauervenezia.com Grand Canal Suite 40000 miles

reg 1000 euro suite... pretty good deal we thought

So many other great uses of those points.

I just bought a new amazon.com Fire tablet for

19999 points no tax free shipping pretty cool.

So do not get mad get even

Thanks for the replies, we will probably use the BA points elsewhere. Using BA points for hotels is a very good idea, I will look into that. I have AA's Master Card but they have a new Visa which offers 40K (as qwodavis mentioned) so I will go for that, as it will give me enough miles for a reward ticket on AA.

One other thing, I have enough BA points to go biz class and IMO that would have justified these fees. But even booking a year in advance they have no availability in biz class for the dates we need.

We have used BA miles on Cathay and I don't think we were hit with major fees. We flew business class in flat beds NY JFK-Vancouver for 50,000 points per person - in my view a good value since it's a very long flight. (We live in NYC and our family is in Vancouver, so the Cathay direct flight is a great route whether we're paying with $ or miles.)

Just depends on the market. For trans-Atlantic, AA and BA runs a joint venture, so doesn't matter who you're flying. I am pretty sure BA doesn't place a surcharge for domestic US flights on AA either... :)

BA charges whopping fees even if only using partners. Same TP route/date on a oneworld partner, one FF ticket thru BA, $725; one thru AA, cost $108, incl phone fee.

Everything was identical!

"I am pretty sure BA doesn't place a surcharge for domestic US flights on AA either..."

I decided to put this to the test by checking fares to Hawaii on both AA and BA. Of course using freebies on BA would mean flying only on AA. AA's price was $10/ticket while BA's price was $26.40/ticket. The extra $14.40 is not a deal breaker, but it still seems curious that they are charging this fee when I would only be flying AA planes within the US.