Travel hackers like us are always looking for ways to redeem our points and miles for free flights. However, award flights aren’t actually “free”. We still have to pay taxes, fees, and sometimes airline fuel surcharges. These carrier surcharges range wildly, from just $5.60 for domestic flights within the US to over $1,500 on some round trip long-haul international flights. No one wants to pay over $1,000 in taxes, fees and surcharges ON TOP OF their hard-earned miles or points. So here we’re going to show you how to avoid airline fuel surcharges on award flights.

So, here’s what you need to know about airlines’ fuel surcharges before booking award flights.

Some airlines collect extremely high fuel surcharges (YQ surcharges), some don’t ever collect surcharges on reward flights, and other airlines impose surcharges on some flights but not on others. To get the most value out of your award ticket, you want to avoid paying high airline fuel surcharges or avoid them altogether.

What is a fuel surcharge on airlines?

Before explaining how to avoid fuel surcharges on airlines, let me first explain what they are and why they came into existence. Airlines introduced them about a decade ago due to rising fuel charges to help cover the costs of fluctuating fuel prices. Fuel prices eventually dropped, but airlines kept those aggravating fees but just changed the name from “fuel surcharges” to “carrier surcharges” or “carrier imposed surcharges”.

Most airlines impose these surcharges, but there are ways to avoid paying them when booking with points and miles.

Book with airline reward programs that don’t ever collect YQ surcharges

Try to book your flights with airline reward programs that never collect surcharges. United Airlines, Avianca, Southwest, Allegiant, Frontier, JetBlue, and Spirit don’t collect surcharges on any flights booked using their miles or points at this time. As always with reward flights, you’re still responsible for the government taxes and fees, which are usually much cheaper than airline surcharges.

Book with airline reward programs that don’t collect surcharges on some of their flights

Some frequent flyer programs impose surcharges on some flights but not others. Here’s some of the most popular programs that don’t collect surcharges on some flights.

Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan only collects surcharges on British Airways and Icelandair. They have many partners that they don’t impose carrier surcharges on, including some great options like Japan Airlines, Emirates, Singapore Airlines, American Airlines, Korean Air, and Cathay Pacific.

This brings me to our recent experience figuring out how to use our Alaska Airlines miles to fly to Dubai. The only option we originally found for award flights was with British Airways, which is notorious for its high surcharges and fees. We recommend avoiding British Airways for award flights because they always charge ridiculously high surcharges and fees.

The extra surcharges and fees on top of our miles would have been over $800 per person for a one-way flight from Washington D.C. to Dubai, which would have cost us over $3,200 for our family of four. That’s a lot of money to pay on top of our Alaska Airline miles, and defeats the purpose of traveling with miles. So we looked for other options with lower surcharges, and eventually found a reward flight with our Alaska Airline miles on another partner- Cathay Pacific -that only charged $61 in taxes and fees per person, which is a much better option.

Other airlines that don’t collect surcharges on some reward flights include, but are not limited to:

–Air Canada Aeroplan doesn’t impose surcharges on flights booked with most of their partners.

–American AAdvantage collects no surcharges on partners except British Airways or Iberia.

–Singapore KrisFlyers collects no surcharges on their own flights nor on some of their partners, including Air New Zealand, COPA and Avianca.

Compare and contrast YQ taxes or surcharges on ITA Matrix

If you want to do some research to compare and contrast carrier imposed surcharges from one airline to another, you can do that online. The website ITA Matrix is a flight search engine that breaks down all the charges for a flight. So lets say we want to go from Baltimore to London, we can type that in the departure and destination cities and then click “one way” and search for all the flight options. Then click on the price to get the breakdown. Look for code YQ and YR for the airline surcharges. You also still have to pay the government taxes and fees in addition to the YQ/YR, so it’s a good idea to look at that too to know your final price in addition to the points.

Just remember, depending on which airline miles you’re using to book the flight, that will determine whether the airline will collect the surcharges. So just because the surcharge shows up on ITA Matrix, you might not be required to pay it depending on the frequent flyer program you’re using to book the award flight. You can call the airline whose points you’re using to ask about fees if you’re not sure, because it can get very confusing and complex with all the airline partners.

Avoiding airline fuel surcharges sometimes means paying more miles

It’s important to know that it’s often a trade-off of miles versus cash. Some options cost more miles but have no airline surcharges, so will cost less out of pocket. Other options will cost fewer miles but will collect surcharges, meaning you spend more cash. You have to decide which is more valuable to you- the cash you’ll spend on the carrier surcharge or the miles you’ll spend for the flight. 

Consider destinations that prohibit or limit airlines fuel surcharges

One other thing to take into account is that some destinations and departure cities have prohibited airlines from collecting surcharges or have limited the amount airlines can charge, so if you can fly from or to those locations, you could save hundreds of dollars. For example, Brazil and the Philippines prohibits surcharges. Australia, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong have limited the amount that airlines can charge. You ultimately want to travel where you desire, but if you have 2 equally desirable options, and one prohibits surcharges and the other levies high surcharges, then that might help you decide where to visit.

Last words on avoiding airline surcharges on award flights

So that’s a wrap on what you need to know about airline surcharges when booking flights with points or miles. You don’t want to get surprised at the time of booking by high surcharges when thinking that your flight is practically free. By doing some research and seeing what options you have with different airlines, you can get the best value for your hard-earned points. We recommend booking award flights through frequent flyer programs that don’t collect airline surcharges. British Airways fuel surcharge fees are notoriously the worst on international flights, so we recommend avoiding them for award flights if possible.

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