Originally Posted by
Randy Petersen
As for fuel charges, hey, i'm not totally convinced they are justified. They reflect certain airlines inability to mage their own business. To this day do not know why airlines have not hired away fuel hedge employees from Southwest. I'd easily pay that employee $20 million a year to help the airline enterprise save $150 million. And this fuel hedging isn't that new, heck it's been a topic way back to Gulf War #1.
And please don't think i'm soft on this, look at my very public ranting on Delta and the purpose of these mergers in the latest InsideFlyer cover article:
http://www.insideflyer.com/articles/...e.php?key=4461
About the article and because the European airlines tend to be much worse than US airlines when it comes to fuel surcharges, I am just curious how much more expensive aviation fuel charges are in Europe than in the US for the same volume unit of aviation fuel. I ask this because it was my understanding -- mistaken or not -- that: 1) aviation fuel is generally not taxed like for cars in Europe (a treaty actually bans taxes on aviation fuel IIRC); and 2) that arbitrage opportunities would drive the differential in aviation fuel price down toward the same price level + difference in transport & storage costs +/- subsidy (if any).
Last edited by GUWonder; Apr 3, 2008 at 1:46 pm