But I am by no means an authority on this subject. I just refuse to allow AC to wait until the dust settles on their deceptive practices and we all accept it as nature's law.

When AC reps come on here and spread outright lies it takes some tough rebuttals. Even then it's a drop in the ocean of their marketing machine. (And can get me banned for a week...)

As we now know, Fuel surcharges no longer exist and they have morphed into an obscure carrier surcharge. This concept of course wouldn't be so ridiculous weren't it for the amount in percentage terms on the base fare.

I understand, for instance, a $5 call center fee on a $80 event ticket. Or something like that. But when the surcharge is as high or even higher than the base cost of the product it becomes suspect and outside the realm of justifiable.

When all sorts of explanations are then adapted to create the excuse du jour, it becomes an outright farce (first it's fuel then not but still called fuel, then it's fuel but not really and finally it's nothing but an arbitrary amount).

When an airline who purports to have communications, ethics and customer engagement at the core of their values pull this kind of nonsense it becomes actually a pattern of deceptive practices which have nothing to do with honesty whatsoever. These items become a tool of confusing the public and distort the clarity of pricing, obtaining and utilizing their product or service.