U.S. travelers haven’t seen domestic airline ticket fuel charges since November of 2008, when legacy airlines folded these surcharges into the base airfare as the price of oil dropped dramatically from early summer highs.
But now, oil prices are cresting over $80 per barrel and the surcharges are beginning to make a come-back: On Monday, Delta Air Lines filed a $20 roundtrip ($10 one-way) fuel surcharge on top of their lengthy list of “peak” travel day surcharges, on tens of thousands of mostly smaller city-pairs with no departure date restrictions.
For example, a one-way connecting Delta flight from San Francisco to Denver or Dallas (via Salt Lake City) on May 27 has both a peak travel surcharge of $30 and a fuel surcharge of $10 tacked on to the base airfare.
Keep reading – and see how the “hub cities” were spared the surcharge…
A closer inspection of the cities with this new fuel surcharge shows that airfares to/from Delta’s hub cities along many non-stop routes were spared this fuel surcharge hike — placing most of the hike on smaller markets and larger non-hub cities.
Airlines have been struggling to get even the smallest system wide domestic airfare hike to stick this year — several attempts have failed in the last few months. In lieu of significant base airfare hikes, airlines have resorted to fewer sales, peak travel day surcharges, a bevy of non-ticket fees and the release of fewer of the cheapest seats, all in order to increase revenue.
This new fuel surcharge filing is effectively an airfare hike as miscellaneous (peak) and fuel surcharges are added to the base airfare prices before the 7.5% U.S. sales tax is added on; note that, as of this afternoon no other airlines have matched the fuel surcharge increase.
Some historical perspective: In the early part of 2008, domestic fuel charges rose to a high of $100 roundtrip as oil prices peaked at over $140/barrel (July 2008). As of 1pm yesterday, oil prices hit $83 per barrel.
We will continue to update as we see activity related to any type of airfare surcharges (I posted the full surcharge airfare rule [peak and fuel] at the bottom of this note and we will be updating our peak travel day surcharge chart early next week).
