Frequent Miler on the Air - How to avoid airline surcharges | Coffee Break Ep102 | 4-21-26

Episode Date: April 21, 2026

Airline fuel surcharges are going up! We've recently seen Air France KLM Flying Blue and Virgin Atlantic increase surcharges on their awards and it's looking like a trend. In this podcast episode, we'll talk about the different ways you can avoid them.How to avoid airline surcharges (02:02) - Booking with an alliance partner that doesn't pass along surcharges(02:15) - Air France KLM Flying Blue booked with Virgin Atlantic or Japan Airline Mileage Bank milesLearn more about going to Europe starting on Air France or KLM Business Class using Virgin Atlantic points hereLearn more about Air France without surcharges via Japan Airline Mileage Bank miles here(04:02) - Rove milesLearn more about using Rove miles here (07:04) - Lufthansa booked through other Star Alliance partners(07:41) - One World is tricky...(11:38) - What can you do about high taxes coming back from the UK?(12:45) - For travel to and from Europe, consider JetBlue's flights booked through Qatar AviosLearn about booking JetBlue with Qatar Avios here(16:34) - SAS(17:51) - Airlines that don't charge surcharges in the first placeVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn HeadsMentioned in this episode:Visit FrequentMiler.com Did you know that Frequent Miller is also a website? At frequentMiller.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best, Best Credit Cards page on the web, guides to all popular rewards programs, and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our posts sent to your email, go to frequentMiller.com/subscribe and sign up for free. https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/Check out all of our other travel podcasts from around the worldThis podcast is part of Voyascape, a podcast network that brings together the world's best travel podcasts. You can find all of our podcasts from around the world at Voyascape.com. If you are interested in advertising or sponsored content on any of our shows you can find out more at the link below.Voyascape Podcast Network

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world atvoyescape.com. Welcome to Freakimilers Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less or your money back. Today's coffee break, airline surcharges. They're going up, up, up. We're going to talk about how to avoid them. As you can hopefully hear from that, we are recording in front of a live audience today.

This is our first time ever giving that a try. And we're at the Toronto Points Travel Festival. And hopefully it'll go well. And, you know, if it works out well, we'll do more of these at future events. But I'm really glad that they have us here. Okay, so people cheered, and I don't know whether they cheered Greg for us, or they cheered for reducing surcharges. search surcharges are increasing.

We've recently seen Air France, KLM Flying Blue, increased surcharges on their awards. We've seen Virgin Atlantic, increased surcharges on their awards. This is a trend that seems like it may be here and here to stay. So today we ought to talk about the ways to get around that, the programs to book through to avoid having to pay some of those high surcharges. Yeah.

So, Nick, I know you have ideas about this, like right off the top of your head. You're dealing with this all the time because, you know, for me, I usually just book for my wife and I. And looking at, you know, $300 surcharges, let's say, is a lot. But when you're talking about an international business class trip, it's like, okay, I'm going to pay that. But you often fly with at least four people, but sometimes even larger family. And 300 times eight adds up quickly, right? It sure does. And I booked Air France last year and faced that.

eight people paying the surcharges. So yeah, I do have some thoughts on that. First, my first thought is I don't want to have to pay it. And so, thankfully, though, there are a number of different airline alliances. And oftentimes, as we talk about booking through partner programs, one of the advantages of booking through partner programs is that you can sometimes get around that. So we brought up Air France, KLM, Flying Blue to start. And so something that comes to mind for flying Air France, KLM, Flying Blue, two things, really. One is that those flights, can be booked through Virgin Atlantic, and you'll still pay surcharges, but now that Air France has increased their surcharges, the surcharges through Virgin Atlantic are a little bit lower

than what you'll pay through Air France, KLM, Flying Blue, and oftentimes the award price is a little bit better. You can book business class awards to Europe, for instance, from 48,500 miles one way through Virgin Atlantic. However, if you have or get access to Japan Airlines miles, and even if you think you don't yet, you probably do, have access to earn Japan Airlines miles. That can be an even better way. From the East Coast, it's 42,000 miles one way in business class to Europe on Air France or KLM using Japan Airlines miles and no surcharges. So departing the United States, it's $5.60 one way. So you can get rid of that entirely. Now you might ask, though, how do I get Japan Airlines miles, right? Oh, yeah, but let me just throw away in because we're

recording from Toronto, I did check it's the same price from Toronto to Europe, at least Western Europe. I'm not sure if you go to Eastern Europe. Yeah, they have a somewhat distance-based chart, so it may cost a few more miles, but none of the surcharges. And so that can be a benefit. And Japan Airlines sometimes has access to five, six, seven, eight seats. And Air France, KLM Flying Blue sometimes releases those five, six, seven, eight seats, even when prices through their program are through the roof. I booked eight-pap. passengers last year Air France would have charged me something like 1.4 million miles and I booked through Virgin Atlantic for 388,000 for the eight people. So it was a big difference. But so a way that

apart from transferring from the major transferable currencies, Rove Miles is something that is open to everyone. So if you're looking to to earn some Japan Airlines miles, maybe you can talk more about how we can do that. Yeah. So Rove is a fairly new entry into the transferable points game, and they recently added Japan Airlines as one of their transfer partners. Roe, what it is, it's a way, it's sort of like a shopping portal. And their shopping portal is one of the ways you can earn Roeve miles. But the other ways are booking airline flights through them, paid flights. But the main way is by booking hotel rooms through them.

So they offer anywhere from five points per U.S. dollar to, I mean, in some cases, they have like sort of special deals. And I've seen as high as like around 50 miles per dollar for certain hotels. And so their pricing is not always as good as you might be able to find elsewhere. But when you're talking about those kind of multiples, the value you'd get at, you know, booking your hotel, you could easily, especially in this example where it costs 42,000 Japan airline miles to get to Europe in business class, you can imagine booking a hotel in Europe through Roeve getting enough miles just from that one booking to pay for

that flight. And so with prepaid bookings, you do sometimes get the miles immediately. So you could if you do it. Yeah, if you do one of their prepaid bookings, the miles show up immediately. If you do a postpaid one, I guess it comes after you actually have your stay. Right. And one of the nice things about Roe of Miles, if you're not familiar, I don't know how familiar folks on this side of the border are with Roe of Miles. I know we've been writing about it a bunch, but I don't know whether it's been covered as extensively on Canadian blogs or not. But they have loyalty eligible rates. So you can also oftentimes earn five road miles while still earning high at points or Marriott points or Hilton points and getting your elite night credit.

So it's a little different than booking through an Expedia or a price line. So that could be a good way. Now, one of the audience members, Greg, brought up the fact that Japan Airlines sometimes has issues with phantom availability. There are times where you'll start a search and it looks like awards are available and they may not be. Now, to my knowledge, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, Kathy. But if you're able to get through to the final checkout page, then I think you're okay. But on the initial search results page, it will sometimes show and look like there's availability.

So you do have to click all the way through to make sure that's available before you transfer miles to do that. But that's one way anyway to get around paying surcharges on Air France, KLM, Flying Blue. But that's not the only program out there with surcharges. So there are a number of different Lufthansa Group airlines that have very high surcharges, of course, if you were to book through Lufthansa Miles and more, but they may also have surcharges through some other programs. Luckily, we've got a number of Star Alliance programs

without surcharges. Obviously, you're familiar with Air Canada Aeroplane. Abiyanka Life Miles is another one that can be great for avoiding surcharges to Europe, United Mileage Plus. So we've got quite a number of different programs for avoiding the surcharges on Star Alliance. What about One World, though?

How do we get around the One World surcharges? Yeah, One World's tricky because, especially British Airways is infamous for, you know, throwing huge surcharges on their flights. And they, they force, apparently force their partners to impose those surcharges too. The best way, if you're going to be flying, if you want to fly British Airways long haul and avoid the surcharges, it doesn't avoid it entirely. But from the eastern U.S. and probably as far west is, Toronto and Chicago, I believe. If you're flying British Airways, if you can book the flight with Cathay Pacific Asia miles,

usually the Texas and fees are way less. And so what you'll want to do is do, you know, first check whether the flight you're looking at is bookable from any of British Airways partners. Like can you book it through American or Alaska or whatever? if you see that you can, then you know that it's probably bookable through Cathay Pacific as well. Then you could log in a Cathay Pacific, run your award search there, and check it out. And the reason I'm saying it in that order is because Cathay Pacific's website for searching for awards is pretty clunky. And so it's easier, I think, to find that your flight is available on other partner airlines first.

and then you'll know it should be available through Kethe. Yeah, and you mentioned Alaska. And Alaska, similarly, for the right itineraries, has particularly low surcharges or lower surcharges anyway than what you'll get through some other one world programs. So again, British Airways tends to have high surcharges, but they tend to be more reasonable booking through Alaska. Also keep in mind that you can move your obvious from one obvious program to another.

And so while British Airways has high surcharges, Iberia sometimes has more reasonable. reasonable surcharges on their own flights anyway than what you would expect to pay if you were to book those same flights with British Airways. So the ability to kind of leverage the different obvious programs can sometimes be a good way to get around those surcharges. Another thing is British Airways itself will often let you pay more avios for your trip and pay lower surcharges. So when you go and you find your award flight on British Airways.com, you'll click on the, you know, let's say the business class flight and it'll show you the sort of default pricing, which, you know, might be, I'm going to make up some numbers because I don't know what the

current pricing is, but let's say $65,000 a Vios plus $800. But there's a button to say other booking options and it will show. you other booking options, which is usually going to be like more a Vios, but lower surcharges. And unfortunately, it can be pretty darn complicated doing the math, trying to figure out which of the multiple options is the best one for your situation. But sometimes you could find a good deal that way. Yeah, that's a great point. Don't sleep on Fin Air either.

Finare is another good obvious program that's worth looking and checking their website from time to time, particularly for booking their own flights, but also sometimes for partner awards. So, and when we mentioned Alaska before, Alaska obviously has a number of strong partnerships, and we mentioned it in the context of booking British Airways just now, but they've got the partnership with Condor that can be very useful in terms of finding availability to get to and from Europe. JetBlue also, if you happen to have a lot of JetBlue miles, JetBlue also has reasonable pricing, particularly from here, from Canada. You can find Condor business class for 54,000 jet blue points one way, getting to to and from Europe. And that's much harder to find

now out of the U.S. I've seen it more from here. Yes. We hope you're enjoying the Frequent Miler on the air podcast. Did you know that Frequent Miler is also a website? At frequentmiler.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best best credit cards page on the web guides to all popular rewards programs and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our post sent to your email, go to frequent myler.com forward slash subscribe and sign up for free. Yeah. So that's a great point. So we should add that in. So if you're looking to visit the UK and you want to come home, obviously you're facing high taxes when you when you come home from the UK. And I say come home, go anywhere from the UK

that's long haul. So what do you do in that case? Yeah. So UK has this UK departure tax, which if flying a premium cabin, if you're flying, well, they impose it on all cabins, but it's much higher if you're flying premium economy or higher. And that can be very expensive. So one easy way is to get a cheap flight over to Dublin, for example, and fly back from there. Dublin has very low taxes flying out from there. You could also fly to other country, like in the past that's been true like Copenhagen, for example, has had very low taxes flying out of there. So, you know, you could do that kind of thing and ideally make it a extra stop on your trip, you know, and enjoy whatever city you go to. So that's the main way to do it. Yeah. Then the last, I think that my last

thought in this topic is to particularly for travel to Europe again. I know we've talked about Europe quite a bit. And Asia is also popular destination and there are plenty of other places to travel Africa and plenty of other options out there. But for travel to and from Europe, don't sleep on JetBlue. And I don't mean JetBlue, True Blue, but the JetBlue flights that can sometimes be booked. You recently booked one of these, didn't you, through Qatar, Obios? Because that's a program that JetBlue is not an airline that comes to mind frequently when I think of travel to Europe. So, and it's not necessarily straightforward finding the availability. But you recently were able to book Barcelona back to the United States. Yeah, I did. Now,

I use Japan Airlines miles for that for only 42,000, but they've split up. So my flight is after the breakup between Japan Airlines and JetBlue, but I booked it before the breakup for that incredible deal, 42,000 miles in business class. And actually, Rove, which we talked about earlier, was having a 50% transfer bonus at the time. So it cost me that much less in Roeve Miles, which was fantastic. The jeep blue is it's tricky. Qatar does no longer shows mint class for for booking jeep blue online. I don't know whether that's a bug or intentional and I don't know whether you could call Qatar to to book them over the phone.

I don't know. The other options are less desirable. So for that same flight, Barcelona to buy. Boston that I booked, I could have booked with something like 145,000 JetBlue miles. That's dynamic. JetBlue, as the price changes, the points price changes. So that's kind of all over the map, how much they'll charge. And that's one way, one person in Mint class.

United charges around 80 to 88,000 points in business class for most of their partners to fly between North American Europe, but for JetBlue, they have special pricing. They charge 120,000 points for that same route. So that's very unattractive. And the next best that I'm aware of is Eddie Had, which charges only 80,000 points, which compared to JetBlue and United is a great deal. But Eddie Had has awful change and cancellation penalties. so I really didn't want to book that because if I ended up, you know, needing to change my mind,

basically I could write off all those points. Yeah, that's a great point. I have not looked through Qatar lately, but I know in the past it was possible to book via chat on their website. And sometimes when I've run into problems, booking things that I can't find online, I find the chat tools can sometimes be useful for many of the foreign airline programs, actually. So that's a potential tip to keep in mind when you run into a roadblock. But for last minute travel, I would say that booking via Etihad or booking JetBlue via Etihad might be attractive if you're somebody who's got the flexibility to book at the last minute because that's an airline that does not have surcharges.

And so the award pricing isn't fantastic. But the availability sometimes for six or seven or eight seats is impressive at times with JetBlue. The Edihad also seems to have better access to award availability for some of their partners. I'm not sure if it's true for JetBlue, but for some of their other partners, I've seen availability for booking through Edihad where it's not available through other partners. And so it's worth considering, as long as you're really sure you're going to be flying that flight. Oh, and then one more, SAS. So Scandinavian Airlines is a program that hasn't been written about much, at least in the U.S.,

because they did not partner with any of the major transferable currencies in the U.S. for a long time, but they are a partner of Rove Miles also. And I don't mean to sound like a Roe of Miles cheerleader today. It's just that Roe of Miles offers some access to programs that anyone can earn those miles. You don't need a particular credit card. So that, I think, makes it interesting. And SAS tends to offer some really good values for getting to and from Europe. And it's an airline that most people aren't looking at. and they don't have surcharges on their own flights. And in fact, on some of their partners, they have significantly lower surcharges as well.

So that can be something else that's worth looking at if you're able to earn points. And my favorite thing about SaaS is if you've got kids, they give you 50% off of the award pricing for kids. So a business class ticket to Europe now is 60,000 miles one way with SaaS. For my kids, it's 30,000. And then when they run a sale, I think they've just had one. I don't know if it's still on now. Sometimes it's like 48,000 for an adult and 24,000 for a kid in business. So that's another program to keep in mind that doesn't have surcharges, even though it's in Sky Team, and may give you another opportunity to get.

Yeah. Now, Nick, we've been mostly talking about award booking programs that don't pass along surcharges to the person redeeming the miles. But the other side of that is, and you sort of alluded to this with SAS, is there's a number of airlines that just don't. charge surcharges at all, so they can't be passed on. So if you're booking through a program like A&A that does pass along surcharges, if you book an airline like Air Canada or United that don't usually impose surcharges at all with A&A miles, then you're not charged surcharges for those things. So that's the other thing that's to look for.

That's a little harder to find, like, which airlines, you know, don't charge surcharges and then finding availability on those two that I just mentioned. They're particularly hard to find, especially business class availability. But there are plenty of other airlines that don't. Right. I mean, American Airlines doesn't charge surcharges. And so whether you're booking through them or booking them through a partner, there are times when booking AA flights through some of their partners can be a better deal.

Alaska in particular, that's another time when Alaska shines. You can book from East Coast. I don't know about whether Toronto or not. Do you know the 45K? I don't know. Yeah, from Chicago at least, right? Or Detroit, Detroit via Chicago, right? Right, right.

So it's very funny when you're using Alaska Atmos Miles to book business class on American Airlines. If you're sort of East Coast based and flying to, let's say, London on American Airlines, Alaska charges only 45,000 miles. From Chicago, it's just foreign. enough west that they charge 55,000 miles. But when I'm flying from Detroit through Chicago to London, it drops down to 45,000. I think that's some bad programming on their part. They didn't intend to make it. It's a great program. It was a great for us. Yeah, for sure. So it's possible that Toronto has that same deal. I just don't know. Very good. All right, Greg. I think we're going to be

looking at giving a refund. So I think it's time to go over time to write. I don't have we gone over. I I don't know if somebody's timing us, but we're probably pretty close, I think. Refunds for everyone. Can we hear some applause for the refund? Thanks, everyone. Don't forget. If you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get on our email list, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list, follow us on all the various social media and check out our frequent mile around the air episodes dropping every Friday. If you love travel, but don't always have time to plan, we've got a podcast for you.

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