redpanda83

I was looking to book LAX-BCN *A award tix during Thanksgiving on Asiana website and it says 50K miles plus estimated fuel surcharge of ~$800 on LH metal (rt) in economy......? Is this typical?

I played around with what little availability there was between LH and LX with different cabin and it seems like the surcharge increases for business class as well (outbound business class on LH, returning economy on LX yielded some ~$950 fuel surcharge).

Is this the grim reality? I read somewhere that OZ doesn't charge fuel surcharge on award flights flown on UA. But I didn't see any UA availability on OZ website

What's the point of low miles redemption if you have to pay so much out of pocket? I think I saw DL's LAX-BCN paid tix for ~$650 on the same days... I feel like OZ miles are so difficult to use if I'm not redeeming on flights to ICN

THD

Unfortunately this is the grim reality. OZ chooses to pass on fuel surchages, which is I would say the industry norm for award tickets.

The actual amount is set by the operating airline, in this case LH/LX choose to charge rather large YQ surchages on their tickets.

This is the reality of award miles today. When tens of thousands of miles are being offered for free simply by signing up for various credit cards, what do you expect?

Kacee

The economy redemption is obviously not worth it. The business redemption can be justified, though still not a great deal.

Your best bet is find availability on UA.

What a load of you-know-what.

redpanda83

I was just shocked because fuel surcharge for redemption between LAX-ICN at all seat levels, were <$300, rt on OZ for end of 2015. I'm fine with paying $300 fuel surcharge for a business class rt on a transpacific flight... But $900 just seems crazy to me....

Shalashaska

That's really not worth it... A full ticket on LH around Thanksgiving costs around $850... So keep your miles!
Anyway, YQ on LH is below $500, and when you add all taxes it's just above $600, so I don't know where OZ is getting those numbers from. Booking fee?

It seems that United might be your only chance to not paying YQ if things haven't changed:
http://www.milevalue.com/asiana-swee...r-50000-miles/

Finally, I agree it is NOT fair to charge those high fees on award tickets! What about everyone else outside the US who do not have access to free miles just for signing up for credit cards? Those are EARNED miles that become almost worthless. So, I would NOT expect YQ to be charged (which is just an arbitrary, voluntary charge set by airlines, and part of their profit margin)

warakorn

Shocked why? The fuel surcharge is actually $0.
The YQ is the so-called international charge, not a fuel surcharge.

Smiley90

We both know that's a load of BS. YQ is fuel surcharge that the airlines dress up as something else to avoid calling it fuel surcharge because they also know it's BS.

Anyway, related to this topic: do we know what carriers have no/low fuel surcharges using Asiana awards? The milepoint link is not exhaustive at all, aside from mentioning United. What about other candidates that tend not to pass on any/many surcharges, such as SQ, Avianca, Turkish? Maybe even SAS/LX/Brussels/CA?