Geese Howard

Below is a chart I created that should give you an idea of how much the member carriers impose on OZ award tickets.



*1: unable to find any award flight on these carriers
*2: server errors occured while booking
*3: Korean government prohibits online bookings from crisis zones such as Egypt

- Avoid the whole Miles&(Charge)More gangs led by RipoffHansa.
- Most European carriers are still running this award scam.
- Hey AC, are you a European carrier?
- No YQ/YR on LX flights inbound.
- SK, LO, and A3 are godsent in Europe.
- Both Korean carriers OZ and KE(Skyteam) don't impose any fuelsurcharge since a few months (they were very little in the first place)
- Fuelsurcharge on A3, NH, BR are negligible
- SQ sucks!
- No South American carrier is allowed to impose YQ/YR
- Nobody is allowed to impose YQ/YR on flights leaving South America

While collecting data for this chart, I did lots of comparisons with UA MileagePlus, and came to a shocking reality.

I'll dig somewhat deeper and let you know once I have enough evidences.

See you next time.

=========================

Edit:
- AC doesn't impose any YQ/YR on trans-Atlantic reward tickets.
- AC doesn't impose any YQ/YR on trans-Pacific reward tickets except for China. (it could be YR-the carrier surcharge for bribing the communistic party)

IluvSQ

Don't know where you came up with this info.
AC charges very high YQ on Atlantic and Pacific routes. These surcharges are
waived for highest-tier members ( SE100K).
If the AC flights are ticketed through a non-YQ carrier such as UA, no fees are
imposed.

Geese Howard

I have the numbers directly from Asiana's online booking.

*A awards can be booked online on Asiana Korean site in Korean language



YVR-LHR on a Friday

miles: 25,000
surcharge: 0
tax & co: KRW42,200
passengers: 1

KRW42,200 = $36

rankourabu

I believe the poster is redeeming OZ miles.

What AC decides to gouge their own point redeemers is irrelevant.
The YQ is not collected by the airline operating the flight - its collected by the airline that issues the ticket.
OZ (like UA and AV) decide not to collect this.

mahasamatman

Therefore, I wonder why this thread is in this forum.

Yet the OP sees fit to blame the operating carriers.

Geese Howard

1. It's not UA who decided not to collect YQ/YR on award flights, but the US govenment that declared it illegal.

2. Same day, same segment SIN-SFO on UA and SQ on OZ miles:
UA: no YQ/YR
SQ: $300 YQ/YR

Why would OZ impose YQ only on SQ?
Because SQ demands it while UA is not allowed to do the same.

Sure, I pay the money to OZ, but SQ will be the one who gets it in the end.

Very simple. It's ALWAYS the operating carrier who gets the money you pay.

Eidt:
I forgot to mention that the SQ flight is not available on UA miles.

The only reason for that I can think of:
UA: All we are allowed to offer is miles
SQ: No money, no seat

Again, very simple.

oliver2002

The YR/YQ is collected and retained by the plating carrier. Unless there is a bilateral agreement in place that regulates how the two carriers net and account for the YQ collected when plating fares/flights.

AA for example has bilaterals with LH and others where it doesn't have to pass on YQ, so it doesn't even collect YQ when issuing LH tickets. Read the trick it thread on the MR forum for such oddities.

When LH/OZ/SQ etc issue award tickets on other *A carriers they collect and retain the YQ/YR just the would with revenue tickets. This is previously agreed with the operating carriers. The operating carrier just tallies the 'cost' for the flight performed thru the *A clearing mechanism against other charges (lounge visits, award redemptions or miles accrued on the plating carrier etc).

Geese Howard

That's a big "unless".

And I've been providing evidences that this kind of agreements is the norm in the aviation industry.

And here comes another one:
Try to book SFO-IST J on TK on UA miles.
Flights on Friday aren't mostly available as saver awards. You will need 150k instead of 70k for that which isn't worth at all IMO.

But they are on 40k OZ miles + $220 YR which is lower than even 70k for UA saver award IMO.

And did I mention that regional SQ business cabins are bookable on OZ miles?

Please don't tell me that there is none of these agreements.

All in all, I'd prefer paying some YQ and treated halfway like a customer over being just a nuisance while being ripped off by the ludicrously high mile consumption anytime of the day.