stant

I was recently looking at some options for award travel to europe, in particular to london, and as expected I was seeing BA flights with a high cash surcharge. What surprised me however were flights on american with a $1033 surcharge for business. I searched and searched and couldnt find any options on american for the old roughly $300 cash surcharge (for tax) that I'm used to.

Did American start charging higher surcharges for award travel?

TIA

MarkY123

I've just tried random dates in July for JFK-LHR and I can see roundtrip Business award flights with the $324.87 fee:
7/22/2022 AA142 JFK-LHR and 7/30/2022 AA107 LHR-JFK.

stant

alright. half of the mystery solved - but the flights i was seeing were american metal. the only time ive seen the higher surcharge was flying on ba. is american charging higher surcharges on some award tickets now?

wrp96

Do you have any screenshots where you were seeing this?

MarkY123

Yes, I just saw $1,068.77 on a mixed BA/AA itinerary, where the JFR-LHR segment was on BA and the return on AA. Once I changed the outbound flight to AA metal, the surcharge went away. The "Price and Tax Information" link in the first case included the line "OTHER TAXES & CARRIER-IMPOSED FEES $700.00 USD".

VegasGambler

I think you are seeing the UK departure tax. It's not a surcharge, it's a tax charged by the UK government.

Change your departure to somewhere else (not UK) and connect through LHR and it will go away

stant

Sorry, no. I should have

This *could* be it if the return had BA service.

Dave Noble

With one way on BA and the other on AA, then makes sense for a carrier surcharge of $700. If both sectors had been on BA, then the surcharge would be doubled

From checking on ITA, surprised that it was only $700 and not $800

You are not seeing anything new, just seeing the standard BA surcharges

javabytes

Were you searching for round trips? And if so, was this higher surcharge showing on the outbound when you were shown an AA flight? It will show the lowest mileage price, so if the lowest mileage price was AA outbound and BA return, the outbound flight selection screen would have shown ~$1k for what appeared to be an AA flight. Once you selected it, you would have been offered return flights that were either on BA and cost the fewest miles, but with the ~$1k surcharge, or if you had selected an AA flight for the return then the mileage price would be higher but the fees lower.

Example... searching a round trip LAX-LHR 2/3 to 2/18.

Outbound search results... sure looks like an AA flight with high surcharges.


But after selecting this outbound, it becomes clear the culprit is really a BA return flight that is the "lowest priced" mileage option being assumed on the previous page:


If you select the AA return flights, more miles, but no surcharge.

TravelerMSY

As far as I know, there aren’t any new surcharges, but the existing ones are higher than in recent years.