gogovrml

Will be our first time flying on ANA. I was very surprised with the $425 fees per traveler, over $850 total for 2 pax. I'm torn as the mileage requirement was very reasonable (85k per person RT for J).

Is this normal? Any ways to avoid?

Wasabi Tofu

I don't know what you mean 'normal'.
ANA doesn't publish surcharge for non-Japan bound route, such as US to PH. So, I couldn't check tax/surcharge with a publicshed one.
Some source-destination country pair have higher surcharge.

If you use separate awards (US-JP, JP-PH), it costs 110,000miles and 240USD(tax and surchage).
Yes, it requires 25,000 more miles.

Or, LAX-xNRT-MNL//SIN-xNRT-LAX costs 100,000miles and 13130JPY(120USD?)
(surcharge between US and SG is cheaper)

Guava

Fuel surcharge on ANA is peculiar. Like Wasabi Tofu explained, ANA only publishes fuel surcharge to/from Japan. So in a period with no fuel surcharge for example, this only applies on itineraries with flights that begin and/or end in Japan.

LAX to MNL requires a connection in Japan if you stay on a single itinerary. This can trigger a different set of unpublished fuel surcharges, which tend to be very high. ITA Matrix provides a fairly accurate estimate of the unpublished NH fuel surcharges.

In order to minimize the fuel surcharge, you will need to break up your trip as follows:

LAX-Japan-LAX on one ticket. And Japan-MNL-Japan on another ticket.

Of course, depending on which mileage program you are using, this may significantly increase the mileage cost of your itineraries. So there is a trade off for sure. Or you can consider booking the itinerary using miles from a program which does not charge NH fuel surcharges such as United Mileage Plus.

gogovrml

Thank you for the explanation. Was taken aback somewhat as my research all said that ANA fees and surcharges were reasonable. Now I know it's much more nuanced than that.