Since we broke the story in late September on peak holiday travel surcharges (originally 3 days, now 30+ days) there has been a lot written about them and frankly a lot of what has been written isn’t accurate.

To help clear up some of the mystery I have provided below a list? (FAQ if you will) of the most common issues I have seen reported in hopes of clearing up some these inaccuracies:

1. Peak Holiday Surcharges are filed on one of the 20+ rules bound to a domestic airfare, specifically in the “Surcharges Category” (Category 12 for insiders) and in order to find them on our airline ticket purchasing site you would have to dig into the fine print on the purchase page and look for a link like “view rules” and the peak holiday surcharges would look like this (with a lot more days listed than this post).
2. Peak Holiday Surcharges are filed in the same exact manor as fuel surcharges which were common in 2008 but were mostly removed from domestic airfare in November of 2008 as oil prices plummeted from a high of $140+ per barrel. The only difference is that fuel surcharges are coded with the letter “F” (Fuel) and peak holiday surcharges are coded with the letter “Q” (Miscellaneous)
3. Peak Holiday Surcharges are added to the base airfare price and then to that sum a 7.5% U.S. excise tax is applied, they are not, I repeat not, charged separately outside the airline ticket quote (like bag fees), they are taxed and are “baked” into the “airfare” price listing
4. The reason airlines have added peak holiday surcharges isn’t nefarious (although it adds to the nickel & dime perception) — it boils down to the fact that if they raised the prices for all days - consumers in the current economy would stop buying tickets on slower days, so it is a way to target smaller increases on busy days. Additionally there is a cost involved in filing hundreds of thousands of new fares to change prices and doing it through a rule filing (single rule can touch all airfare) is more cost effective.
5. We have been tracking airfares for over 7 years and have never seen this type of peak holiday surcharge filing behavior by domestic carriers before, so it is significant – mainly because the airlines have lifted up the “secret curtain” and let consumers know exactly which days are busiest and where they expect make a premium – consumers should use this information to there advantage to avoid these peak days (if possible) because they will both pay more and deal with the potential hassles of flying on days with full planes.

I hope this help clears things up a bit and that everyone has a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving weekend.