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Jun 20, 2011 | 4:59 pm

#41

hillrider

FlyerTalk Evangelist

Join Date: Mar 1999

Posts: 12,097

SDG issue

I'm joining this thread a bit late and got curious about the BSR/ICH rates and just in general whether there's a currency arbitrage here.

I tried to dig a "current" USD rate for SDG:

Oanda says 2.64.
I looked at VISA to see what they would exchange it at, and came up empty. Same with MasterCard. AmEx cards use Oanda and builds in its commission, giving a 2.71 rate.
The Wall Street Journal does not list the SDG on its daily charts, which probably implies that it's not traded in NYC. On its weekly chart, it shows 2.68 for 17 June.
Bloomgerg.com (the website) does not list SDG amongst the trove of currencies it has data for.
I couldn't find any exchange rate on the Financial Times.

Conclusion: it appears that the actual exchange rate is around 2.60/2.70, but the currency is not really traded. So it seems that 3.10 is what some of the GDSs are using and it's what we most likely end up having to pay for tickets issued on that GDS.

Last edited by hillrider; Jun 20, 2011 at 5:20 pm Reason: Removed speculation on AA pricing issues

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