For years, fuel surcharges have been the biggest enemy of using miles to redeem award tickets. Recently, ANA and JAL announced that starting December 1 they will remove fuel surcharges. Given current global oil prices, fuel surcharge collection makes little sense, so this cancellation is understandable.
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What is a Fuel Surcharge?
Fuel surcharge (Fuel Surcharge, YQ) is an extra fee airlines charge on top of fares when fuel costs rise, to offset cost increases caused by higher fuel prices. In simple terms, it’s a disguised fare increase.
Since the second half of last year, global oil prices have fallen sharply, and more recently they have reached a new short-term low, which makes collecting fuel surcharges seem unreasonable.
About this adjustment
In short, beginning December 1, Japan Airlines (JAL) and All Nippon Airways (ANA) will stop charging fuel surcharges.
You can see details on the ANA related page and JAL related page. In the tables and notes below, you can see that starting December 1, fuel surcharge is listed as N/A.
ANA table:
JAL table:
What this adjustment means
In short, because JAL and ANA belong to Oneworld (OW) and SkyTeam? no, Star Alliance (SA) respectively, this has a major impact on mileage redemptions for airlines that charge/pass on fuel surcharges.
In OW, except for AA (except for BA U.S.-Europe routes) and BA (for certain routes), almost all other airlines generally charge YQ. This includes JAL and Cathay (CX).
In SA, except for UA, AC (certain routes), and AV, all others generally charge YQ. And unfortunately AC charges YQ on ANA flights.
After this adjustment, AC and ANA redemptions for ANA flights will not be charged YQ. Similarly, OW members redeeming JAL flights will no longer need to pay YQ. This makes ANA/JAL’s own 60,000-point China-U.S. economy round-trip redemption especially worthwhile.
Also, ANA/AC points can be earned via MR/SPG, which is a big upside for MR usage.
Related Posts
For more on ANA, see the blog tag page for ANA
For more on JAL, see the blog tag page for JAL
For more on AMEX MR, see the blog tag page for MR