nux

You see the amount in full before purchase. There is not really a published table of prices including taxes/fees/charges for revenue tickets either. Base fares are published, but the total price is not shown until purchase.

Although, there is a table for maximum redemption costs here: http://www.britishairways.com/travel...z/public/en_us

BOH

I would agree that in a free competitive market pricing is based on customer willingness to pay. Am just surprised you are so comfortable with such sharp practices of a "surcharge" being so quickly linked to oil prices when on the way up but surprisingly zero linkage when oil is on the way down.

With such condoning and support of the surcharge philosophy and smoke and mirrors approach to pricing can I assume you are somehow connected to the banking and financial sector?

shorthauldad

The amount of Avios you pay - based on the distance, in bands.

The amount of tax and the airport charges you pay - based on the airport(s) and countries you fly to/from.

The amount of YQ you pay - based entirely on what BA think they can get away with.

shorthauldad

What is http://www.britishairways.com/travel...r/public/en_gb then?

oyster

Good grief.
Are you of the opinion that national insurance contributions are not a tax on income simply because of how the operator of those charges names them?

Even as a loyal shareholder and customer of BA, I know that that YQ is nothing more than a sneaky surcharge.

Globaliser

This is overstating the case. There are some customers who do have a legitimate reason for knowing how the total to pay is broken down.

If you have agreed with BA that BA will offer you a discount of 10% off the fare at a time when YQ surcharges did not exist, then that agreement has a rather different flavour when the YQ surcharge accounts for (say) 75% of the non-tax element of the total that BA asks you to pay.

The frequent flyer redemption is an extreme case of this, because the use of BA Miles and now Avios has AFAIK always been treated as a 100% discount off the fare. The current situation is significantly different from before - hence the complaints.

nux

My point is that it is not directly linked to the price of fuel.

As a consumer it would make no difference to me if BA removed YQ and increased the base fare by the same amount for revenue tickets, and added a "Yeomanry and Queens' surcharge" to award redemptions of the same amount.

For revenue tickets the split between base fare and YQ really makes no difference.
For award tickets if BA didn't collect YQ or any cash component above taxes then either they will accept the reduced revenue (potentially releasing far fewer award seats) or increase the avios required for redemption.

oyster

I doubt you'd plunder as much coffee from Waitrose if it was free* instead of free.

LTN Phobia

If it puts people off redeeming their Avios on flights and we get a better chance of getting them, I can't say I feel too strongly against YQ

Paralytic

I've seen plenty people here describe themselves as a loyal BA customer, whereas in every case it sounded like they simply chose BA because it was best for them, but what is a "loyal shareholder of BA"?

Does it mean you'll keep the shares nomatter the price, or is it that you've found them a good investment, or you use the shareholder discount? If either of those, I'd not call that loyalty, but simply making the most of your investment.

TabTraveller

Perhaps not. But I don't think anyone has claimed that avios redemptions on BA are free. One can of course use avios for free flights in the USA, Japan, etc. pretty easily.

Now, if Waitrose were to add YQ to my free coffee I'd be pretty upset. Although it might serve to shorten the ridiculously long queue present at all hours outside the Waitrose in Canary Wharf!

jonas123

YQ should just be considered another part of the fare nowadays. It's not like the customer is really misled - YQ is always included in the price you see on screen. The complexity of GDS systems and fare filing make it very difficult to constantly change the YQ. As has also been mentioned, removing the YQ would not really have a noticeable impact on the prices, as the core fare would just rise in its place and new mechanisms would be put in place for redemptions etc. Equally, when it was a ‘fuel surcharge’ fuel prices rose quite rapidly, and you could argue that BA already had a load of customers already booked onto it’s services so it lost out for a decent period of time.

nux

Perhaps BA should directly correlate the surcharge to the fuel price, and if the price of JETA1 rises/falls between the time of booking and the time of the flight they can send a 'fuel adjustment' email and debit/credit the difference. Shouldn't be too difficult to implement, they already do this for schedule changes..

Or just collect the fuel surcharge once all passengers have boarded calculated as the total cost to fill the tanks divided by the number of passengers. The flight crew can go up and down the aisles with collection tins to pay the fuel bill. Might add a few minutes before pushback though.

Oxon Flyer

In these days of hedging, is the price BA is paying to fuel their planes today related to the current price of oil or JETA1 anyway ?

FrancisA

.... or of course, behave as an airline in a highly competitive industry and only reduce costs when the competition does and it threatens revenue.

Numerous costs will change on a daily, even hourly basis, would anyone really want the price of an airline ticket to change by the minute?

BA price their fares based on what the market will bear, making some routes more profitable than others.

The fact that historically YQ was introduced as a fuel surcharge is now irrelevant ancient history. It continues to exist because it has revenue and may be tax advantages to BA over loading this into the base fare.

In reality now the link between YQ and fuel costs is dead, the only way fares and/or YQ will go down is if the competitive environment forces that on BA.