British Airways Class Action Settlement: Get Avios Or A Partial Cash Refund If You Paid BA Fuel Surcharges Between 2006-2013

Never Miss Another Deal - Follow DansDeals on Facebook

If you live in the US and redeemed British Airways Avios for a ticket that included fuel surcharges between 11/9/06-4/17/13 you should check your email and/or spam folder to check for a unique ID number. You can then plugin that ID number here to learn how many Avios or how much cash you can receive from the settlement.

If you paid fuel surcharges in that time period and didn’t get an ID number you can send an email to info@fuelsurchargeclassaction.com to investigate a claim.

You’ll get 12.5K Avios if you made one redemption, 20K Avios for 2-5 redemptions, or 35K Avios for 6+ redemptions. You’ll also have a cash option, which will equal 16.9% of the actual fuel surcharges that you paid.

The default option will be bonus Avios, so be sure to check what the cash option is and decide if you would rather have the cash or Avios. I value Avios at about 1.25 cents each, but the value of a mile will vary based on how you use them.

Sadly, nothing will actually change for Avios because of this. BA will continue to charge massive fuel surcharges to redeem Avios for Trans-Atlantic travel.

Luckily there are lots of ways to redeem Avios without paying fuel surcharges. I won’t be getting anything from this settlement as I never redeemed Avios with fuel surcharges.

• There are no fuel surcharges for travel on American within the Western Hemisphere. Flights start at 7,500 Avios plus $5.60.
• Alaska flights have no fuel surcharges systemwide, these flights can only be booked over the phone.
• LATAM flights have no fuel surcharges systemwide. Many of their flights can only be booked over the phone.
• Flights within Australia, Europe, Japan, and many other countries and regions have little to no fuel surcharges.
• There are no fuel surcharges for flying on Qantas within or from Australia.
• Fuel surcharges on award-winning carrier Cathay Pacific are also very low or non-existent and you don’t even need to fly all the way to Hong Kong (though you should-great city with awesome kosher food, airport lounges with kosher food, and a business or first class flight you’ll never forget!) to get a taste of their awesome bed, seat, pajamas, and amenities. They fly a daily 777 nonstop between JFK and Vancouver which I reviewed in this trip report.
• You can significantly cut the fuel surcharges when flying on Iberia by transferring your BA Avios into Iberia Avios
• British Airways 5th Freedom Flights (flights that don’t depart from or arrive to the UK) have significantly lower fees. For example even though Singapore-Sydney is a longer flight than NYC-London the fees in first class on Singapore-Sydney are less than half of those from NYC-London.
• As long as you have earned a single Avios within the past 12 months then fuel surcharges for intra-Europe and intra-Africa flights will be very low. You can transfer points from AMEX, Chase, or Starwood to activate that benefit.

Did you receive a settlement offer? How many Avios or how much cash are being offered to you and which option will you take?

HT: shmooz, via DDF