Originally Posted by
lallyr
Actually I am most interested to know why some airlines charge YQ on awards and others don't.
Surely if your competitors are charging it then it makes sense? Or else do they not charge so they can fill more seats. So they make money off awards or just filling up empty seats.
Hence why most of the above questions cropped up.
Just speculation, but not mere speculation:
There are at least two factors that affect whether an airline charges YQ on award tickets (and undoubtedly more factors than just these two).
1. Common practice in the (local or regional) industry. In the US, for example, locally-based airlines don't do so as a general practice, so if one decided to implement the practice it could find itself at a competitive disadvantage.
2. Legal and regulatory constraints, including consumer protection laws. In some places (the U.S. for example) you cannot call something a "tax" unless it is in fact a tax, and you can't say something is "free" unless it is free. So, you can't advertize that a customer can earn "free flights" or "free, but you must pay taxes" when you add a normal cost of providing the service and also charge for that. (How about "free, but you must pay the cost of our employees' salaries, fuel, overhead, equipment capitalization, and profit"? Doesn't sound so inviting, does it?)
(Of course, #2 also has an effect on #1.)