This post in the series on avoiding fuel surcharges (or taxes) when using British Airways Avios is about how stopovers can make an itenirary cost signficiantly more or less.
- Introduction
- Choosing the Right Airline
- Stopovers to Save Fuel
- Iberia and Aer Lingus to Europe
So here’s how to do it the right way and avoid paying dollars when using your Avios (BA’s miles) by adding stopovers:
- Zone Based Fuel Surcharges vs. Distance Based
- Avoiding Costly Airports
- Short Layovers
- Routing through Brazil?
Zone vs. Distance
There are many odd things that happen when British Airways calculates your fuel prices. You would think that BA would price a fuel surcharge by distance but that doesn’t seem to be true for most flights out of the US. It doesn’t matter if you’re flying New York to Hong Kong or if it’s from Los Angeles, the fuel surcharge is $155. Which is odd because LAX – HKG is a much shorter flight.
Yet a flight from Vancouver is slightly more and with even less distance.
- YVR – HKG = $176
- LAX – HKG = $155
So that’s the odd part – zone based fuel surcharges. It makes no sense. However, when you’re using the Iberia trick and booking your Iberia flight on their website (which we’ll talk about later), the fuel surcharges are distance based. However, you can still use the best of both worlds.
From US to US on britishairways.com is less than $5. However, an Iberia flight to Madrid will cost more from LAX than MIA. So you might as well fly to Miami and make a stop (as short or as long as you want) and then book another flight on Iberia.
Just for example,
- LAX – LHR in BA Business Class = $476.20
but
- LAX – JFK in AA Business Class = $5.00
- JFK – LHR in BA Business Class = $438.20
By routing through JFK you actually save a little bit of money (not that I would pay that much for an award flight). Similarly, a flight from Toronto to London would be $426.78. So routing through YVR would actually save $45 in this case. That little bit of time in the air adds and therefore extra fuel cost adds up.
Avoiding Costly Airports
Back to the example of Vancouver being more expensive, this is an example of routing through a different city to avoid that fee. Routing through LAX instead would make sense (if it’s the same cost of avios) in order to save $20. That’s not a huge difference but you will find that some other countries have insane airport taxes. London for example will run you over $100 just to fly out of it.
So if you can route around these cities, you can save yourself some serious money in a group. For example, if you depart from London you’ll pay $100 more than if you depart from Dublin. So if you plan on making a stopover somewhere with Avios, be money conscious.
Short Layovers
So the opposite of a stopover would be to book a layover. Here’s the general rule, you do not pay airport taxes when you are arriving or transporting at the airport. However, from a taxes standpoint, if you stay longer than 12 hours you have to pay the airport fee. So if you’re routing through London and not wanting to stop make sure you book a less than 12 hour layover if your goal is to avoid that fee. Also make sure you book it on the same ticket as well. A lot of the times I’ll piece together my ticket and book separately with Avios, but on a layover you want it to be the same booked itinerary so you are officially in transit to avoid that tax.
In short, design your routes to avoid spending time at costly airports and try to route in such a way that spends less time in the air on routes that have high fuel surcharges.
P.S. It has been suggested that you could make a stopover in Brazil in order to save money (as they don’t charge fuel surcharges for locals). But routing through Brazil to save money is one of the goofier lines of logic you could use.
- You have to change your address to a Brazilian address. This is a no-go for me for all kinds of reasons.
- It only solves your problem one way! Plus coming back is where all the big fees are (with airport taxes).
- You spend way more Avios.
- Why wouldn’t you just route in such a way that you could fly on Iberia or Aer Lingus?
- The visa for Brazil is like $150 a person. Are you saving money now?
- You have to spend way more time in a plane. Way too much time to even consider economy.
Just thought, I’d give my opinion on that too. Would you change your address to Brazil? Would you want to fly to Brazil to go to Europe?
