How I Avoided a $130 Accidental Fuel Surcharge on an American Airlines Award

I was booking a somewhat complex oneworld explorer award this weekend with American Airlines miles. These awards charge a total miles amount based on total flown distance. I will be writing more about the specific award and routing I was booking and where I’m going in a later post, but I wanted to draw attention to a mis-applied fuel surcharge that almost ended up costing me an extra $130.

Fuel surcharges are usually referred to as YQ charges so it’s easy to miss them when they’re applied incorrectly. But here is my story in making sure you carefully check the charges on award tickets:

The oneworld explorer award must be booked on the phone. I called and gave the agent my flights once by one. Once the award was put together and priced, I was quoted a total taxes and fees of $302 in addition to the miles. The ticket involved leaving from Los Angeles, traveling to South America with transits through Brazil, Argentina and Chile and then returning. It also used a combination of American Airlines, Qatar Airways and LAN, none of which should cause American Airlines should charge any fuel surcharges. I knew each of these countries has departure taxes around $50-$60 so $300 sounded a little bit high.

The thing with booking oneworld explorer awards over the phone is you just get quoted a total price at the end. While you can check the full miles amount is correct since that’s based on distance, the taxes are a bit more opaque. That said, they can easily be verified by asking the agent for a full breakdown of the taxes.

Our conversation:

Me: $302 seems on the high side for the ticket taxes. Would it be possible to tell me.

Agent: Certainly. $130 YQ charge from Los Angeles to Sao Paolo.

Me: YQ is the code for a fuel surcharge. American Airlines does not apply fuel surcharges to its own flights.

Agent: I don’t think that’s what that is, but let me check on that.

She put me on hold for some time and came back. She said they removed that and thanked me for noticing it. The new charge was $172, which was far more in line with expectations.

While it’s unfortunate these mistakes do happen, the truth of the matter is they sometimes do. No process is perfect and these rarely booked oneworld explorer awards may be manually priced and human error can add an extra charge or two. Knowing how to navigate the system and to question when something unexpected happens is the way to guard against it.

The remaining $172, I paid with my new Citi American Airlines AAdvantage credit card. See:  100,000 miles sign-up bonus for the Citi Executive American Airlines. My card has already arrived and I will be receiving a $200 statement credit for spending in the first 12 months.