Loading ...British Airways (BA) announced its another increase in fuel surcharges - the twelfth in four years blaming high oil prices for the increased cost of customers’ tickets.
From May 2 on passengers on long return flights - nine hours or less will pay an extra £20, taking the total charge to £126. On flights more than nine hours, the increase charge will be £30, adding £158 for a return flight.
Shorter flights will also see an increase in prices from £20 to an extra £26 per flight.
British Airways claimed that due to continually rising oil prices, its annual fuel price will hit £2 billion for the first time and as a result, the price is passed on to travelers.
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The price of oil is nearing record highs at $118 a barrel. BP announced a rise in profits of 48 percent to $6.6 billion in 2008’s first quarter while rival Shell reported a rise of 12 percent during the same period.
BA introduced fuel surcharges of £2.50 in 2004 and since that time the extra cost on a flight under nine hours or less has swelled by 2,500 percent, and the charge for flights over nine hours increased by 3,000 percent.
Today’s increase is the second this year on long flights comes just a few weeks after BA opened Heathrow’s Terminal 5. The opening of the new terminal has been chaotic with thousands of bags waylaid, hundreds of flights cancelled and the exit of two of the company’s most long-serving executives.
In 2007 BA was fined £121.5 million by the Office of Fair Trading and an additional $300 million by the US Department of Justice after it was found guilty of conspiring to fix fuel surcharges. Virgin Atlantic escaped punishment after it came forward to expose the collusion.
In February of 2008, the two airlines agreed to pay up to £100 million in compensation to travelers who had been affected by the fuel surcharges on trans-Atlantic flights.
www.britishairways.com
