As I told USA Today a couple of days back, a number of airlines have finally dropped their fuel surcharges – or at least significantly lowered them – but, hold off on the celebration. The surcharges haven’t disappeared; they’ve simply been folded into the base ticket price.

So no, we consumers won’t necessarily save money – we’ve just gained a bit in transparency.

Translation: the airlines had a PR problem on their hands – the problem being, clinging to fuel surcharges even though the price of oil was way, way down. Of course to the airlines, this made sense because when the price of oil first started going crazy, they didn’t have these surcharges in place – they’re making up for that omission, now.