I haven't been on these forums but I book these tickets a couple of times a year for my wife and the surcharges keep increasing and are getting more annoying. I do fly enough to be SE (now S100k) as I fly to Europe about 5 times a year and to Asia about 2-3 times per year. But what is the rationale to having surcharges rather than eventually rasing the fare?
How do you do your calculations on the value of a point? My numbers are a bit different. The Base Fare for a J class YYZ-LHR on this flight is $3748 and you can get this on Aeroplan points for 90,000 points. That is $0.042 / point. Subtracting the other incremental fees off the value of this flight ($358 higher fuel surcharge vs Y and additional $108.84 in UK duty) brings a value of $.0365 / point. (3748-358-108.84)/90000
The Base Fare for Y class is $425 and that costs 60,000 points so the value of a point is similar to what you get at $.007/point.
FYI -
here is a good story on fuel surcharges from the Sydney Morning Herald:
Frequent flyers have been treated like dirt for the past decade as the airlines continue to roll back the value of loyalty to the point where it’s almost cheaper to shop around for a fare rather than accept a “free” flight redemption.
The centrepiece of the cost of a frequent flyer redemption is now the fuel “surcharge”, which has kept rising even though fuel prices are now falling.