I know flights from New Zealand normally have no fuel surcharge (YQ), which can be traced back to the 2005 ruling of the New Zealand Commerce Commission case against Air New Zealand for imposing a fuel surcharge. The NZ court ruled that fuel costs are operating costs and should be included in the ticket price, not separated out. Both Air NZ and Qantas were eventually fined. Following this ruling, it seems no airlines charged fuel surcharges for flights originating from NZ anymore. However, I discovered that Cathay Pacific and Qatar Airways are still imposing fuel surcharges on tickets ex-NZ, both on revenue and award tickets. I haven't seen other airlines doing this for flights originating from NZ, so they appear to be the only exceptions. For example, on the AKL-HKG one-way trip, Cathay charges a fuel surcharge of NZD 194, and on the AKL-DOH one-way trip, Qatar charges a fuel surcharge of NZD 337. When I searched the records, it appears that Cathay Pacific has been charging a fuel surcharge on flights ex-NZ for about 10 years. I am quite surprised that nobody noticed this. I don't understand why, when other airlines stopped charging YQ on flights from NZ (At least they incorporate it into the fare and do not display it separately), these two airlines continued to do so. It is also quite unfair to other airlines that follow the ruling. Has anyone else experienced this with these two companies and been charged YQ ex-NZ? Do you think they should be exceptions in charging YQ on their tickets ex-NZ?
Anyway, I've submitted this case to the NZ Commerce Commission's online complaint portal and am waiting for their review. Do you know of any other departments that might be able to address this issue as well?