In a bizarre twist of fate today — Air Canada has partially un-rung the checked bag fee bell by announcing a roll back of their 2nd checked bag fee charge.

But, wait! Amidst a $50 drop in oil prices per barrel in the past 45 days – Air Canada has also announced they are ditching North American fuel surcharges — I must be dreaming.

Unfortunately the truth of the matter is that I am dreaming — Air Canada has gotten the benefit of marketing of fuel surcharges — blaming big oil and speculators — and is simply going to add the charge back into its base airfares, but I do give them thumbs up for making prices more transparent.

Meanwhile the drum beat for fuel surcharge rollbacks continues — as last week Singapore announced some fuel surcharge rollbacks along with Air France/KLM — including this note today that Japanese airlines are “thinking” about fuel surcharge rollbacks as well while Air Canada’s competitor WestJet not to be out done also rolled back fuel surcharges.

To be fair to the airlines — the price of jet fuel doesn’t exactly track the price of oil because of the refining process — converting oil to kerosene jet fuel — continues to be unusually high in part by issues with hurricane IKE (learn more about “crack spread” and the cost/profit of refining oil to a final product)

Last week the Associated Press contacted the major legacy airlines asking them when they were going to roll back fuel surcharges and the answer — “Not Yet, Just Not Yet”.

I will be putting out a domestic fuel surcharge report later today as a follow on to the International Fuel Surcharge Report I posted this past week so take a peek to get the insider scoop.