Saturday, March 17, 2012  Airlines Must Explain Basis of Fuel
Surcharges  When the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT)
imposed new requirements on airlines and online travel agency
(OTA) advertising and disclosure, one overlooked aspect was the
"fuel surcharge: component of the cost of the international
airline ticket. For the longest time, airlines could simply
announce increases in fuel surcharges that are not part of the
base fare while still advertising the base fare cost. The DOT
now mandates that airlines not only disclose clearly to the
public what these fuel surcharges are, but airlines must
identify some reasonable baseline of that has to demonstrate a
methodology of how the surcharges were calculated. It also
brings back a point repeated frequently in this blog: that
airlines attribute increases in fuel surcharges to rising fuel
costs, but they either do not react promptly when fuel costs
decline, or they simply ignore it.