Taylor on Travel

British Airways' change of policy on refunding fuel surcharges has agents hot under the collar, and quite right. After all, they have to explain why a fuel surcharge is shown as though an addition to a fare but not repaid even on a non-refundable ticket when a client does not fly. BA repaid it in the past, right up until December 22. This is plain money-grabbing, surely?

Well, yes - and BA admitted as much in its notice to the trade in December, which explained: "Although we have refunded the surcharge on our best-value fares in the past, we are no longer able to do this in the current economic climate."

As a BA spokesman told me: "We have to make savings where we can. We are not particularly happy about it. It is not a decision taken lightly."

We are not talking about a small amount of money. The fuel surcharge on a £338 ticket between Heathrow and New York JFK is £136. Now you see it, now you don't.

However, BA does have a defence. It is perfectly within its rights. More, it did not need to repay the fuel surcharge on non-refundable fares prior to December 22. The fuel surcharge is part of the fare - the UK Office of Fair Trading insists on this - and as part of the fare a fuel surcharge on a non-refundable ticket is non-refundable.

So why does BA - and it is not alone - insist on showing a fuel surcharge as an element of a fare? In the aid of transparency, it says. Hokum, a fuel surcharge does not cover the full cost of fuel on a flight so what is revealed by this supposed transparency? When I asked, BA declined to give me even an average figure for the proportion of fuel covered by surcharges. What is transparent about that?

Bu there is a rationale. The retention of fuel surcharges despite the collapse in the oil price is partly to do with marketing - a way of saying 'We are not responsible for this price being this high." It is partly to do with regulations that restrict fare rises in some markets, for example Japan.

And it is partly to do with the complex structure of fares. It is far simpler to change the surcharge element of a fare than to change the fare itself. That would mean updating rates worldwide every time there was an oil-price shift and doing so across IT platforms.

BA suggests doing so would "be problematic for the travel trade as it is logistically difficult for some to manage". Most of you will know better than me whether that is the case. So what do you think?