This week I’m discussing the basics of fuel dumping. Remember, I’m not going to describe any particular dumps in detail so you can go out and book it yourself immediately after you finish reading this. I’m only trying to show you how to get started in the game so that, someday, you will be able to find such a deal with some effort of your own. There are lots of things I’m leaving out along the way, to post later if I decide I should, so you may think I’ve overlooked something. Feel free to email or comment if you think it should be added now.

• Part 1: Introduction to Fuel Dumping
• Part 2: Finding and Booking a 3X
• Part 3: Variations and Advanced Strategy

Definition of a 3X

The abbreviation “3X” stands for “third strike,” meaning it is the third flight in an itinerary and you strike it by not flying. Normally missing the plane will result in the rest of the itinerary being cancelled unless you head to an agent and ask to be rebooked on a later flight. Since in this case it is the last leg, missing it has no real repercussions.

Of course, you don’t HAVE to miss the flight, but under most circumstances, you won’t be able to fly it. Generally a 3X is in some far away place. If you are flying from the U.S. to Asia, the 3X might be in Europe. Not exactly convenient. Some newbies try to book something like SEA-FRA-SEA and then dump it with SEA-PDX. Not going to work.

I’m not going to give any more geographical guidance other than warning you not to limit yourself by staying too close to home. This is an opportunity to be creative, and sometimes creativity begins with a 100 failed attempts. Still, some regions of the world do lend themselves toward being rich sources of efficient 3Xs, and you may get a sense of where to look after you read the rest of this post.

Efficient Dumps

When I say a 3X is “efficient” I mean that you save more money than you spend on the dump. Remember how I mentioned on Monday that every candidate fare has three components? Those are base fare, taxes, and fuel surcharge. You can’t do anything about base fare and taxes, so the point of the dump is to add a third flight that results in a lower fuel surcharge.

But it’s not quite that easy. Because you’re adding a flight, you have to pay the base fare and taxes on that, too. This means that a dump can be perfectly effective while being horribly inefficient. What good is dumping a $400 YQ if your 3X costs $400? Well, sometimes that can be worthwhile, but we’ll leave that until Friday…

My point is that “effectiveness” and “efficiency” have a subtle difference in meanings, and you must consider the role of each. An efficient 3X saves more money than it costs. An effective dump is one that removes a large enough portion of the YQ from the original fare to be worth the effort to find and book.

One of the easier ways to find efficient 3Xs is to search for very cheap flights, those with fares that are low enough that if they prove to be effective they will easily pay for themselves. Generally, cheap flights are short flights. And short flights tend to cluster in at least two kinds of places. I’ll leave you to figure out the rest.

Finding a 3X

For the most part, searching for a 3X involves a lot of guess and check. First you find the base fare you want to dump. Second, you figure out the YQ and all-in price. Finally, you perform a multi-city search using the candidate fare for trips 1 and 2 and the potential 3X as trip 3. Then you search and see if anything happens. There are patterns that exist, but I won’t go into them.

If the all-in fare goes down, check the fare construction as I’ve described previously and see if the YQ is actually lower. Another possibility is that the base fare is now higher because a different fare class was used, and this increase could have negated the decrease in YQ. This isn’t necessarily bad if you wanted to try to apply an upgrade that requires a minimum fare class.

[Side note: Don’t apply VIP upgrades to American Airlines flights or any other flights that require reissuing the ticket in order to process the upgrade. Your dump will be noticed, and the deal may be killed. To the best of my knowledge, United processes systemwide upgrades differently so that you can still apply for one using the online form. Obviously you should never call an agent to process an upgrade.]

You should make ample use of ITA’s “nearby airports” feature when searching for a 3X. This is one reason it can be beneficial to search for 3Xs in areas with a higher-than-normal airport density. However, remember that not all 3Xs are located in these areas and that you don’t want to overload ITA’s search engine by searching too many airports at once. It will timeout after 60 seconds, so you must strike a balance.

Specificity

Finally, be warned that 3Xs are very specific in every sense. They can be direction specific, meaning that the 3X must be booked as traveling from X to Y but not from Y to X. It also means that the fare you are trying to dump is direction specific, so that you it works only when flying from the U.S. to Europe but a different 3X is required when traveling from Europe to the U.S.

The list of conditions gets longer. A given 3X may be able to dump any candidate fare from airlines in a particular alliance, or perhaps only from one or two carriers. However, it may be flexible and work on several different city pairs within the same region. If a 3X dumps a candidate fare from SFO to LHR, it may also dump fares from LAX to LHR or from SFO to CDG. The amount dumped may vary, and sometimes it does turn out to be very specific to a particular city pair.

To convey some of this flexibility while also maintaining the code used in most online forums, a continent naming convention was introduced as follows:

• C1: North America
• C2: Europe
• C3: Asia
• C4: South America
• C5: Africa
• C6: Oceania
• C7: Antarctica

C7 doesn’t matter much for now, but we can always hold out hope…

The list basically just names regions on the map from left-to-right, top-to-bottom, starting with North America. Sometimes certain regions will get their own codes if necessary, such as C1.5 or C2.5.

Booking

I’m not going to spend much time on this because it should be obvious. In most cases, you can’t book a dumped itinerary on an airline’s own website. These itineraries generally involve multiple airlines that are not always in the same alliance, so an online travel agency (OTA) becomes necessary.

Just because it worked on ITA doesn’t mean it will work on your OTA of choice. Sometimes it will appear to work, but you will get a call or email later complaining that they couldn’t process the ticket and asking if you want to rebook it at the much higher “normal” price. If this happens, just decline. You don’t need to attract attention to what you’re doing.

There are many more OTAs out there than the big names like Orbitz, Expedia, and Travelocity. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

As for real travel agents, don’t bother. While it is relatively easy for a travel agent to “force” a fuel dump by constructing the ticket in a certain way, there are rules against this, and it will only lead to bad results. If you convince one to do it for you, he or she will likely get a debit memo from the airline demanding the missing YQ. And then they’ll come after you. At all times you should avoid interacting with real people in this process. Don’t talk to the airline or a travel agent about anything.

There. To all you worrywarts, I don’t this was that revelatory. You are always welcome to suggest any necessary edits.

I showed you earlier today how to find and book a 3X. Here is an example of what to look for when you are testing a 3X. First, a screenshot of the candidate fare from Los Angeles to Tokyo:

As you can see, there is a very hefty fuel surcharge (YQ) of $576. Over 65% of this fare is fuel surcharges! Now let’s take a look at what happens when I apply a 3X as part of a multi-city itinerary:

The new fare is only $569.20 all-in. Note that the 3X added on $56 in base fare and another few bucks worth of taxes. But it left the base fare intact and reduced the YQ all the way to $205. I’ve just saved hundreds of dollars, getting an effective 35% discount.

Notice that I’ve erased just about every distinguishing part of those fare constructions. I didn’t give you the 3X cities or even the fare basis codes and airline of the original candidate fare. This is about as much information as I’m willing to provide. The dump exists, and that’s all I’ll tell you. Please don’t harass me for more details about it because that’s something you need to learn to do on your own.

I’ll leave you with a note of caution against sharing similar information with other people. There is a PDF circulating of a recent PowerPoint presentation someone gave on fuel dumping. I got my hands on a copy, and it references an even better dump than this one. The author seemed to be boasting and tried to be clever, erasing the airline’s name and the cities of the 3X. But he left the airline’s logo. Not the most useful piece of information if you aren’t familiar with all the obscure airlines based in developing countries, but after 15 minutes of work with Google Images cross-referenced against data from OpenFlights, I had the answer. That’s why I covered up everything in my example above. You never know what shred of a clue will lead people to the answer.

This week I’m discussing the basics of fuel dumping. Remember, I’m not going to describe any particular dumps in detail (though I did post an example on Wednesday) so you can go out and book it yourself immediately after you finish reading this. I’m only trying to show you how to get started in the game so that, someday, you will be able to find such a deal with some effort of your own. There are lots of things I’m leaving out along the way, to post later if I decide I should, so you may think I’ve overlooked something. Feel free to email or comment if you think it should be added now.

• Part 1: Introduction to Fuel Dumping
• Part 2: Finding and Booking a 3X
• Part 3: Variations and advanced strategy

It doesn’t have to be a THIRD strike

Originally, fuel dumping was designed around the 3X because that was easy and straightforward. You would fly your normal itinerary, book an extra flight that dropped the fuel, and then never fly it. It had to be at the end because if it were anywhere else then missing it would result in the rest of the itinerary being cancelled, too.

However, those were the good ol’ days. It used to be you could book simple domestic 3Xs that you might actually use and still get a 100% dump. In fact, that was just about the time I learned how to do this, so I’m very disappointed I could never take advantage because some were very convenient for me. Such is life.

Now if you want to get creative you have to move the 3X to the beginning of the itinerary. This is called a “1X” because it comes first instead of third. But unlike a 3X, you actually have to fly the 1X. The “X” has been preserved for consistency so that everyone knows what purpose the flight serves, but it doesn’t mean you should “strike” it like a 3X.

Searching for and booking a 1X is pretty much the same as it is for a 3X, but they generally work better and are more common. Not that common, but a noticeable improvement over a 3X. Because you NEED to fly a 1X, it helps if you’re the sort of person who can plan trips months in advance. A 1X is not necessarily going to be any more convenient than a 3X, which means you have to know that you’ll just happen to be in the Middle East and available to fly a one-way trip in order to dump the YQ on a trip to Asia two months later.

You don’t have to dump just one trip

Remember how I told you that a 3X is often direction-specific? Well sometimes, but not always, X-Y can work as a 3X and Y-X can work as a 1X. That means you can book three trips at once!

• Itinerary A: (1) A-B, (2) B-A, (3) X-Y
• Itinerary B: (1) Y-X, (2) C-D, (3) D-C

If X-Y dumps the fuel as a 3X for itinerary A and Y-X dumps the fuel as a 1X for itinerary B, then you have two dumped trips as well as a more convenient way to use your 1X.

You can also book a 5X, which involves two round trips, A-B-A,C-D-C followed by the 5X at the end. Similar combinations and extensions of this strategy are out there, but it requires a bigger commitment up front.

Open jaws are your friend

If you need to fly a 1X, what better way to take advantage of it than to fill the gap in an open jaw? To remind you, an open jaw is an itinerary where you fly in or out of a different airport at either your origin or destination, e.g., (1) SFO-LHR, (2) FRA-SFO. A double open jaw is where you choose different airports at both ends, e.g., (1) SFO-LHR, (2) FRA-LAX.

Usually the rule is that the “jaw” portion of a trip must be shorter than either of the flown legs. This means they are likely to be short trips, and short trips make great 3Xs. (An open jaw is a great travel hacking strategy in general. For example, so you can fly into one European city, backpack through several countries, and then fly out of your eventual destination.)

Again, you need to plan several itineraries in advance, but if you know there is a 1X in South America, for example, you could book an open jaw itinerary to South America (and use a 3X to save some fuel) and fly that 1X while you’re there. The 1X can then be used to dump the fuel on a separate itinerary to Africa that doesn’t work well with any 3Xs.

Be creative

Hopefully you’re starting to realize just how creative you can be with your fuel dumping strategy. A 3X doesn’t work because it’s the third flight. It works for other reasons governed by fare and ticketing rules. If you can put that 3X in a different position, whether first, or fifth, or in combination with a 4X, then you have many more options available to you.

I’ve only described some of the more common examples. If you aren’t able to dump your fare using a first approach, try some others and see if you have better luck. I’ve also left out some of the tips I’ve learned about fuel dumping, such as a few things to look for in the fare rules for a candidate fare and which airlines tend to be easier to dump. Remember, the more you learn to practice finding and booking dumped itineraries on your own, the easier this will become. Don’t let yourself become too focused on the examples I provide just because I happened to spell out a few of the common ones.

Fuel dumping involves some sharing and camaraderie in the online forums, but it is ultimately an individual challenge of you against the computer, trying to find that one flight that will save you hundreds of dollars.

BryanIAH just shared a new mileage “jog” on his blog, mileagerunning.com. At 4.6 cpm, it’s not the greatest. We both admit that. But Mexico City sounds like a lot of fun to me, and you can go visit Carlos Slim’s new museum. This is one of those cases where you should be willing to pay a little more for the opportunity to visit for more than a few hours.

Although direct connections on US Airways are available, the trick here is that you’re allowed two connections in each direction, which will allow you to boost the number of miles earned significantly. Something like SEA-PHX-CLT-MEX and back. I’ll leave you to visit his blog to read the rest of the details.

Image Credit: BryanIAH at www.mileagerunning.com

Let me add a touch of suspense for those who are interested in fuel dumping. Flights to Mexico don’t generally have YQ, but they can be used in some creative routings to bring that CPM down to zero. And for those interested in accumulating US Airways Dividend miles, you can earn a 40K bonus by signing up for the US Airways credit card from Barclays, which also comes with a 5K mile discount on award travel booked on US Airways flights.

Last weekend was one of the worst times to be away from home. Sure, I enjoyed visiting Branson and Table Rock Lake (despite what my tweets may have suggested ), but there were several excellent yet also very transient travel opportunities taking place during my absence.

Singapore Airlines Caught with Its Pants Down

While I was meeting Megan’s family, Singapore Airlines updated its computer systems and opened nearly all its flights to partner award bookings. Singapore is normally very stingy and blocks its space from other carriers. After debating for a day or so, I booked a trip for us to Singapore and Hong Kong in first class (business class return). I don’t know that we’ll be able to use it, but as a 1K I can cancel at any time with no penalty. This deal has now been “fixed” so it was good I pulled the trigger anyway.

I didn’t actually have enough miles in my MileagePlus account to buy the tickets at first, but fortunately I’ve been making an effort to pool everything in my Ultimate Rewards account with Chase. Points transferred to miles instantly, yet another reason I love my Chase Sapphire and Ink Bold cards. We even passed Chase’s infamous Springfield, MO, customer service center on our drive to Branson!

Edit: In the comments, David says that SQ availability is back. Maybe it never left? But it could also be phantom availability, which is becoming common with UA (e.g., LH first class).

American Airlines Gift Cards Bite the Dust

I also noticed while reading MilePoint (but reported first on FlyerTalk) that American Airlines gift cards will no longer be sold at Costco. I wrote about these a couple weeks ago as an easy 10% discount on all AA-operated flights. Plus, there are ways to get extra discounts like a 2% rebate if you’re an Executive member or a 9% rebate in the form of Ultimate Rewards points if you buy them with a pre-paid American Express card.

Losing a single 10% discount when several others remain isn’t the end of the world. I’m not sure it’s worth stocking up unless you have definite travel plans. My usual SODO location in Seattle is now out of stock, so the only one left is a good 30-45 minute drive away. Is that worth it to save $100-200? I’ve heard reports that some stores are consolidating them as inventory thins, so availability may fluctuate.

Korean Air Invents Plane that Flies without Fuel

Mistake fares are much less common than they used to be, as Gary reported last week. However, one of the few opportunities remaining even in an era when fat fingered fares are prevented is the miscalculation of fuel surcharges on international routes. I was able to take advantage of one last summer to visit Spain with my sister, and I remember rumors that too many mistakes on US Airways-operated flights may have hastened Spanair’s demise shortly after.

This morning it was reported in several places that Korean Air flights to Tokyo from Los Angeles were dropping their fuel surcharge if you started out with a nonstop flight on Alaska Airlines from various West Coast cities. Something like SEA-LAX on AS followed by LAX-NRT-LAX on KE. Who wants to go to Tokyo for $400?

Not surprisingly, the deal was dead almost as soon as it hit the blogs. (Just to emphasize Spanair’s incompetence, their last mistake was live for almost three days.) I haven’t examined it very closely, but this reminds me of a 1X variation of a fuel dump since simply forgetting to include the fuel surcharge wouldn’t seem to require the initial Alaska segment.

When I discussed fuel dumps several months ago, I talked about how the original form was a 3X or “third strike” because you could just skip that last segment. But you have to fly a 1X because it comes first. They are easier to find, but also more difficult to carry out. They rarely have an airport, or even a continent, in common so consider this deal a lucky break. It just goes to show how important it is to always be paying attention to your inbox or RSS feeds for the latest deals.

Star Alliance MegaDO Full in under 10 Minutes

Or something like that. Really, I was amazed it took so little time. I was fortunate to get booked on the international portion, which guaranteed me a spot on the domestic charter, too. But my flights home were delayed significantly on Sunday, meaning I didn’t get to bed until 3 AM, about 23 hours after waking up. The general booking window opened four hours later. Yeah right…

I’m glad I’m on it, and I look forward to seeing many of you for the first time this November if you’re able to go, too. Be sure to check out this thread on MilePoint if you are looking for a roommate to help split the hotel costs during the trip.

I was contacted two weeks ago by a reporter at The Economist who wanted to do a piece on fuel dumping for Gulliver, their business travel column. His email was pretty clear that he didn’t want any 3Xs, but rather was looking for insight into how and why it actually works. I talked to him for about 30 minutes and gave him the best explanation I could, but I didn’t expect it to ever get published since he seemed to be looking for a level of technical detail that only an airline or organization like the ATPCO (Airline Tariff Publishing Company) would be able to provide.

And while some people will probably send me hate mail for talking to him at all, he already had a fair understanding of how fuel dumping works just by reading the forums on FlyerTalk and elsewhere. I don’t think I gave him anything new other than a quote. My attitude can be summed up by our conversation at the end of the call, when he asked if I had any reservations about the article: “Frankly, I think most readers of The Economist have better things to do with their time. If you have other ways to earn money, it makes more sense to do that and pay a higher fare. But for some people, it’s a challenge. It’s fun.”

I don’t fuel dump anymore. I know other people who don’t fuel dump anymore, or who are very selective. Apparently United has been running audits on some people’s reservations and following up with phone calls. American has always made it difficult to apply upgrades since they are processed manually, creating an opportunity for review.

And by and large the tricks have become more difficult to find and implement, such that the opportunity cost of getting started and maintaining a stable of working tricks is rarely worth the financial savings. The traditional 3X is now often replaced with more complicated substitutes, and ITA is no longer the “easy” way to search for fuel dumps that it once was.

The airlines are apathetic, too, which is why fuel dumping is still around. Piecemeal fixes have always been possible when a trick gets too popular, but larger fixes aren’t possible without significant IT investment. Do you really think United is going to attack a small leak like fuel dumping when it can’t manage its own day-to-day operations? How many mistake fares (both revenue and award) did it have this year? They have bigger concerns.

And indeed most of the big holes have been plugged, with Airfare Watchdog making a splash before I even figured it out. It’s difficult enough that beginners find it harder and harder to find that first dump that keeps them motivated to continue. The marginal cost of fixing the remaining holes is prohibitive unless an airline starts to attract a significant number of bookings. There are audits that notice this kind of thing. If an airline normally sells 10 tickets a day on the Miami-London route and now it’s selling 100 — while tickets with other East Coast departures remain stable — that looks suspicious.

I don’t think fuel dumping is going to end any time soon. It is just not what it once was and hasn’t been for a long time. Which is why I tell people who want to get started, it’s great if you find it fun and entertaining, but don’t expect to take a stab at it this weekend and book a trip on Monday morning. Do it because you like a puzzle.

I know many people have come to visit this blog because they see my posts in the “Trick It!” thread on MilePoint. In fact, one of the reasons I started Hack My Trip was because I usually get a few messages every week from people asking if I have any insight into how to get started on fuel dumping or if I know of a 3X that will work on their desired itinerary.

I don’t know if this post will encourage or discourage those people, but I want to make it clear that I realize this subject has complicated ethical implications. It exists in a legal gray area, and the amount of effort required for a payoff makes many existing members of this group concerned about how open we should be to training new people.

Fuel dumping is a method by which a fuel surcharge on an international fare is removed through the addition of one or more additional unrelated segments. Because of IATA (International Air Transport Association) rules that few people understand completely, the combination of certain flights and carriers causes the fuel surcharge to be all or partially eliminated. Although you still have to pay for the additional segment (called a “3X” or “third strike” because it is the third flight and you “strike” it by not flying) the added cost of a good 3X is much less than the savings of not paying for a fuel surcharge of $300-500.

This is one of the most challenging tricks out there, and it doesn’t help that so much of the information people share online is in code, so let me address each of those concerns and explain the reason why I persist in helping people get started in this field. I am doing this now to prepare you for when I start to explain fuel dumping more thoroughly, probably in February. Everything I’m posting before that time, such as the instructions on using ITA last week, are part of your preparation.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use those tools for ordinary travel, too, but we all know not to put inexperienced drivers behind the wheel of a sports car.

First, fuel dumping is difficult because you are essentially using the airlines’ automated computer systems against them. When fares involving several airlines are automatically priced and ticketed, there are rules about which one of those airlines is responsible for collecting the revenue. This airline then doles it out to the other airlines on which you actually fly.

Fortunately for us, the ticketing airline gets to decide whether it wants to collect that fuel surcharge. Airline X might assign a $100 base fare and $400 fuel surcharge, but if airline Y collects the money, it might only charge $100 for that portion of the itinerary, and that’s all it has to hand over.

The rules for assembling a tricked itinerary are not as clear as you might think, and many times when you find a 3X that ought to work it can raise the base fare by pushing you into a different fare class due to restrictions on fare combinability. Even if the 3X successfully removes the fuel surcharge, a higher base fare is going to void some or all of the savings.

Anyway, we’ll get to how to create a tricked fare in later weeks. What I really need to discuss is the importance of the secrecy.

DesertRose, another major contributor to fuel dumping education on MilePoint, pointed out a schism in how different people view maintaining a shroud of secrecy and exclusivity:

Group 1: People who regard FDs as an elaborate set of tools and knowledge to be earned through work and preserved from outsiders.
Group 2: People who think tricks are like error fares, something posted by a miracle and then exploited until it’s gone.

I argue that neither of these approaches is healthy. Group 1 creates a hostile elite class that discourages new entrants because it dilutes the pool of rewards. People are expected to become experts on their own and then join the group as a full-fledged contributor. Group 2, however, would quickly drain that pool of rewards faster than it can be replenished. Overexploited tricks are quickly identified and shut down, which is why Group 1 works furiously to maintain the secrecy lest anyone from Group 2 (usually less experienced people) figure out what’s going on and start sharing indiscriminately.

It’s a form of class warfare, and what we are faced with is a tragedy of the commons. Fuel dumping can be a lucrative endeavor for everyone as long as the practice is controlled and not overused.

Secrecy and codes are used to make it harder for non-contributors to swoop down and seize the deals without bothering to learn anything about how the process works. We don’t want people to search on Google for “cheap fare to Europe” and find a thread where it spells out exactly which flights and carriers to use for a $250 ticket to Paris.

Make no mistake, the airlines know about what we’re doing, and they could kill the practice easily if they really wanted to (they’ve killed tricks overnight in the past). The reason they don’t is either because they haven’t identified which particular fares are being dumped at any given time or because it isn’t worth the effort to save a few thousand dollars a month. This is a game of Whac-A-Mole. They will certainly notice and care if it any particular trick rises above the rest and stays there long enough to be hit on the head.

Unlike a mistake fare, which is only good on that specific fare and SHOULD be exploited and shared by everyone before it disappears, a good trick can be used on many different fares and can survive for months or years. If the 3X is overused, however, it will no longer be good for anyone. A good collection of 3Xs should be tended and cared for like a garden.

Code is used in online forums, such as claiming you were able to use “The Spruce Goose” to dump 80% YQ from C1-C2. Usually a cute name is all you get to figure out the fuel dump, but it’s not much harder than The New York Times’ Sunday crossword puzzle. As for C1-C2, those are continent codes. Because the 3X is often valid on several city pairs, all the information you really need is that it’s good on flights between the U.S. (C1) and Europe (C2). “YQ” or “YR” is the code airlines use to denote the fuel surcharge. Maybe the trick only works on a few city pairs, but the poster has narrowed it down enough that you can find it. If you can’t afford to spend some time figuring out the code, then you must be making $200 per hour at the office.

This code is enough to fool Google and the people who are just looking for a random cheap fare. Should one of them come across it, they won’t understand it and will move on—just like I did when I first stumbled across FlyerTalk’s fuel dumping thread in 2009. If you are serious about learning to fuel dump like a pro, you’ll have patience and stick it out, which I later did in 2010. At 16,500 posts and counting, it’s a long read, but I’ve done it. MilePoint is much friendlier, but I will admit that FlyerTalk is the expert version.

As for helping others, I strongly believe that adding people to the group will help develop more and better 3Xs. I also strongly believe that those who are included need to respect the efforts of those who came before them. For this reason, there are some rules you must follow to play this game:

1. Don’t call the airlines! We don’t care if you want a seat assignment, an upgrade, or need to handle a schedule change. You should expect that an agent would see what you’ve done, cancel your ticket, and kill the deal. If you can process a seat assignment or upgrade online (like a United systemwide upgrade) that’s okay, but do not let anyone from an airline see what you’ve done. If you need to rebook, sorry, your money is gone. I don’t know of any people who have successfully rebooked or refunded a dumped itinerary because that means talking to an agent.
2. Don’t call the airlines! Do I really need to repeat myself?
3. If someone yells “stop!” pay attention and edit your post as appropriate. Discussions can get VERY heated on these forums, and when you’re in the business of trading secrets, you don’t want any enemies.
4. Use code so that you don’t expose other people’s tricks. For all you know, someone else already published it using a code you couldn’t figure out, so even if you think you found something novel, don’t risk the chance that you’re wrong.
5. Don’t use code when you ask questions. As long as you’re not revealing sensitive information, it’s quite fine to ask for help tricking a fare from New York to London. That’s not hurting anyone, and no one wants to spend time figuring out what you’re trying to ask. But if you wish to mention the tricks you’ve already tried, make sure those are still coded.

I hope this post makes clear what you can expect from me when I start to discuss fuel dumping. I will help you get started, showing you how to look for a 3X and assemble and book a dumped itinerary. However, I won’t be sharing any working tricks. This is an instructional guide ONLY! People will learn one way or another and should learn to do it right so it doesn’t ruin the game for the rest of us. At least, that’s what I hope will happen. It’s always a pleasure to see people who get some early help succeed beyond your expectations and become a frequent contributor to the group discussion. More often people reach a competent but less spectacular level of ability.

Readers, what do you think about my philosophy? I’m always open to suggestions because, as I’ve said, this is a shared resource. I don’t think you can convince me not to share anything, but it’s always useful to know where people draw the line.

This post was originally published on Travel Codex.

You’ll remember last week I discussed my philosophy on fuel dumping and whether or how much of the technique should be shared openly. This week I’m going to tell you a little bit about how to do it yourself. A lot of it can already be found in my posts on InsideFlyer. However, some could use more clarification.

• Introduction to Fuel Dumping
• Finding and Booking a 3X
• Variations on Fuel Dumping and Advanced Strategy

Understanding Fuel Surcharges

With the rise in oil prices in recent years, many airlines have taken to adding fuel surcharges to their international fares. Some of them even make you pay the fuel surcharge when you book an award trip, claiming that the miles only cover the base fare (which is total BS, but that’s another story).

The result is that many (but not all) international fares include three components: (1) base fare, depending on the fare or booking class like L or Y for coach and Z or C for business; (2) taxes and fees imposed by governments and airports; and (3) fuel surcharges. Some airlines still include fuel surcharges in the base fare, and others may break them out only for certain routes. However, when a fuel surcharge exists, there is often the potential to dump it.

Why include fuel surcharges in the first place? I’m not entirely sure. I don’t believe it was done just to make people pay fuel surcharges on award tickets. That’s a bad customer service decision when the fees and fuel surcharge may cost more than a discount revenue ticket, and clearly some airlines (mostly U.S. airlines) manage to survive without doing it. I think a better explanation is that airlines can easily adjust the cost of a ticket by changing just the fuel surcharge that applies to many routes between two regions without adjusting the base fare for each individual route as well as the dozen or so fare classes on each flight.

When you get into this hobby, you may notice that the fuel surcharge between the U.S. and Europe is one price on PanAm, but a different price on TWA. It’s yet another price on PanAm if you are instead flying from the U.S. to Asia. It makes sense from the perspective of individual carriers trying to easily adjust fares in response to their own fuel expenses to each region even if we as consumers don’t always like the way it’s been implemented. For example, fuel surcharges haven’t really fallen much even as the price of oil has dropped significantly.

Since this is called fuel dumping, that means you can’t dump a fare without a fuel surcharge. Taxes and fees are generally fixed, so I don’t worry about them. A few special cases include the example of flights out of London, where the UK has imposed a large air passenger duty (APD) on departing flights. A way to avoid this is to originate your trip in another country but pass through London as a connection. But again, this is an example of a special case and not something I worry about.

Finding Candidate Fares

What you should worry about is finding flights with low base fare and high fuel surcharge, generally designated as YQ (sometimes YR) in the fare construction that you can find through ITA or other fare search engines. Base fares between the U.S. and Europe may be $80 each way in winter and $120 in summer. The reason the price you see is so high is that the fuel surcharge can be $500 plus an extra $100 in taxes. Dump the fuel and fares as low as $200 between New York and Europe are not unheard of. These low base fares are called “candidate fares” and are not all that difficult to find. Just look for low total fares and check the fare construction to see how much of it is YQ. If it’s just low because the base fare is $200 each way and there’s no fuel surcharge, then this fuel dumping technique isn’t going to help you at all.

Per the comments below, I’d like to clarify that a low base fare is not critical. However, it is important that there be sufficiently large YQ (or a very effective 3X) that a fuel dump be able to lower the fare by a worthwhile amount. If the YQ is $100, it probably isn’t worth the effort.

For example, here is a fare to Rome that I’ve been researching lately. Not a terribly good candidate, but you can see that even so, YQ of $476 makes up about half the total ticket price of $985.70. For a good candidate, the YQ can be over three-quarters of the all-in price since the YQ doesn’t vary due to seasonal demand or occasional sales.

Candidate fares are easy enough to find that they often aren’t coded at all; people just post the entire fare construction with dates and airlines and flight numbers. I’m ambivalent toward this approach. On the one hand, certain valuable itineraries that can be brought to very low prices should be coded because if too many people find a working dump and succeed in booking it, the fare could disappear and the dump stop working.

It may not be a Tiffany jewel just yet, but we can all agree that it’s not wise to leave rough diamonds lying around unguarded. On the other hand, no one wants to decode the question just so they can create and code an answer to it. Less would be accomplished if everything were coded.

What Is a Third Strike?

The critical tool to make fuel dumping work is the “3X” or “third strike.” A normal fare might look like A-B-A. Two legs from A to B and back. A dumped fare might look like A-B-A,X-Y. The same A-B-A trip with an additional X-Y leg tacked on as part of a multi-city itinerary. However, you don’t fly X-Y. If anyone asks, you fell ill while changing a tire on the side of a road in the middle of a snowstorm because you were in a funeral procession for your recently deceased great aunt Hilda. Something came up. Because typically X-Y is in some remote part of the world that you can’t easily get to.

Of course, sometimes X-Y is nearby, and X or Y may even be the same as A or B. But it doesn’t have to be, and I think that’s where a lot of people get tripped up. Just because I am trying to dump a fare from Seattle to London does not mean that my 3X needs to originate in Seattle. The route construction for a dumped itinerary is A-B-A,X-Y and not A-B-A-Y. That comma is key.

Words of Caution

Of course, the airlines don’t particularly like you doing this, so if you want to get any frequent flyer miles for this it might be wise to schedule X-Y for a month after you return to A, making sure that you have enough time for the miles to post before you “miss” your 3X due to some “totally unforeseen” event. This is also why the 3X happens last. If you put it at the beginning of your itinerary and miss it, the rest of your ticket will be cancelled, too.

Finally, don’t tell anyone working for an airline or travel agency or in any remote position of authority about what you are doing. If anyone does some digging and sees that the fuel surcharge is missing and what you’ve done to achieve that, they could easily cancel your ticket and close that 3X off to everyone else in this game. So don’t whine about seat assignments. Don’t try to reschedule your flight or do a same-day change. Don’t ask about upgrades. Just accept that you are getting a steal on this flight and the miseries of being treated like a non-elite passenger in coach are part of the bargain.

I will talk about how to find a 3X and other variations on fuel dumping strategy later this week, so make sure you are proficient at using ITA before then. Check out my three-part series on using ITA if you haven’t already:

• Introduction to Using ITA
• Advanced Routing Language
• Other ITA Features

This post was originally published on Travel Codex.

This week I’m discussing the basics of fuel dumping. Remember, I’m not going to describe any particular dumps in detail so you can go out and book it yourself immediately after you finish reading this. I’m only trying to show you how to get started in the game so that, someday, you will be able to find such a deal with some effort of your own. There are lots of things I’m leaving out along the way, to post later if I decide I should, so you may think I’ve overlooked something. Feel free to email or comment if you think it should be added now.

• Part 1: Introduction to Fuel Dumping
• Part 2: Finding and Booking a 3X
• Part 3: Variations and Advanced Strategy

Definition of a 3X

The abbreviation “3X” stands for “third strike,” meaning it is the third flight in an itinerary and you strike it by not flying. Normally missing the plane will result in the rest of the itinerary being cancelled unless you head to an agent and ask to be rebooked on a later flight. Since in this case it is the last leg, missing it has no real repercussions.

Of course, you don’t HAVE to miss the flight, but under most circumstances, you won’t be able to fly it. Generally a 3X is in some far away place. If you are flying from the U.S. to Asia, the 3X might be in Europe. Not exactly convenient. Some newbies try to book something like SEA-FRA-SEA and then dump it with SEA-PDX. Not going to work.

I’m not going to give any more geographical guidance other than warning you not to limit yourself by staying too close to home. This is an opportunity to be creative, and sometimes creativity begins with a 100 failed attempts. Still, some regions of the world do lend themselves toward being rich sources of efficient 3Xs, and you may get a sense of where to look after you read the rest of this post.

Efficient Fuel Dumps

When I say a 3X is “efficient” I mean that you save more money than you spend on the dump. Remember how I mentioned on Monday that every candidate fare has three components? Those are base fare, taxes, and fuel surcharge. You can’t do anything about base fare and taxes, so the point of the dump is to add a third flight that results in a lower fuel surcharge.

But it’s not quite that easy. Because you’re adding a flight, you have to pay the base fare and taxes on that, too. This means that a dump can be perfectly effective while being horribly inefficient. What good is dumping a $400 YQ if your 3X costs $400? Well, sometimes that can be worthwhile, but we’ll leave that until Friday…

My point is that “effectiveness” and “efficiency” have a subtle difference in meanings, and you must consider the role of each. An efficient 3X saves more money than it costs. An effective dump is one that removes a large enough portion of the YQ from the original fare to be worth the effort to find and book.

One of the easier ways to find efficient 3Xs is to search for very cheap flights, those with fares that are low enough that if they prove to be effective they will easily pay for themselves. Generally, cheap flights are short flights. And short flights tend to cluster in at least two kinds of places. I’ll leave you to figure out the rest.

Finding a 3X

For the most part, searching for a 3X involves a lot of guess and check. First you find the base fare you want to dump. Second, you figure out the YQ and all-in price. Finally, you perform a multi-city search using the candidate fare for trips 1 and 2 and the potential 3X as trip 3. Then you search and see if anything happens. There are patterns that exist, but I won’t go into them.

If the all-in fare goes down, check the fare construction as I’ve described previously and see if the YQ is actually lower. Another possibility is that the base fare is now higher because a different fare class was used, and this increase could have negated the decrease in YQ. This isn’t necessarily bad if you wanted to try to apply an upgrade that requires a minimum fare class.

[Side note: Don’t apply VIP upgrades to American Airlines flights or any other flights that require reissuing the ticket in order to process the upgrade. Your dump will be noticed, and the deal may be killed. To the best of my knowledge, United processes systemwide upgrades differently so that you can still apply for one using the online form. Obviously you should never call an agent to process an upgrade.]

You should make ample use of ITA’s “nearby airports” feature when searching for a 3X. This is one reason it can be beneficial to search for 3Xs in areas with a higher-than-normal airport density. However, remember that not all 3Xs are located in these areas and that you don’t want to overload ITA’s search engine by searching too many airports at once. It will timeout after 60 seconds, so you must strike a balance.

Route Specificity

Finally, be warned that 3Xs are very specific in every sense. They can be direction specific, meaning that the 3X must be booked as traveling from X to Y but not from Y to X. It also means that the fare you are trying to dump is direction specific, so that you it works only when flying from the U.S. to Europe but a different 3X is required when traveling from Europe to the U.S.

The list of conditions gets longer. A given 3X may be able to dump any candidate fare from airlines in a particular alliance, or perhaps only from one or two carriers. However, it may be flexible and work on several different city pairs within the same region. If a 3X dumps a candidate fare from SFO to LHR, it may also dump fares from LAX to LHR or from SFO to CDG. The amount dumped may vary, and sometimes it does turn out to be very specific to a particular city pair.

To convey some of this flexibility while also maintaining the code used in most online forums, a continent naming convention was introduced as follows:

• C1: North America
• C2: Europe
• C3: Asia
• C4: South America
• C5: Africa
• C6: Oceania
• C7: Antarctica

C7 doesn’t matter much for now, but we can always hold out hope…

The list basically just names regions on the map from left-to-right, top-to-bottom, starting with North America. Sometimes certain regions will get their own codes if necessary, such as C1.5 or C2.5.

Booking a Fuel Dump

I’m not going to spend much time on this because it should be obvious. In most cases, you can’t book a dumped itinerary on an airline’s own website. These itineraries generally involve multiple airlines that are not always in the same alliance, so an online travel agency (OTA) becomes necessary.

Just because it worked on ITA doesn’t mean it will work on your OTA of choice. Sometimes it will appear to work, but you will get a call or email later complaining that they couldn’t process the ticket and asking if you want to rebook it at the much higher “normal” price. If this happens, just decline. You don’t need to attract attention to what you’re doing.

There are many more OTAs out there than the big names like Orbitz, Expedia, and Travelocity. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

As for real travel agents, don’t bother. While it is relatively easy for a travel agent to “force” a fuel dump by constructing the ticket in a certain way, there are rules against this, and it will only lead to bad results. If you convince one to do it for you, he or she will likely get a debit memo from the airline demanding the missing YQ. And then they’ll come after you. At all times you should avoid interacting with real people in this process. Don’t talk to the airline or a travel agent about anything.

There. To all you worrywarts, I don’t this was that revelatory. You are always welcome to suggest any necessary edits.

This post was originally published on Travel Codex.

This week I’m discussing the basics of fuel dumping. Remember, I’m not going to describe any particular dumps in detail (though I did post an example on Wednesday) so you can go out and book it yourself immediately after you finish reading this. I’m only trying to show you how to get started in the game so that, someday, you will be able to find such a deal with some effort of your own. There are lots of things I’m leaving out along the way, to post later if I decide I should, so you may think I’ve overlooked something. Feel free to email or comment if you think it should be added now.

• Part 1: Introduction to Fuel Dumping
• Part 2: Finding and Booking a 3X
• Part 3: Variations and advanced strategy

Fuel Dumps Don’t Have to Use a THIRD Strike

Originally, fuel dumping was designed around the 3X because that was easy and straightforward. You would fly your normal itinerary, book an extra flight that dropped the fuel, and then never fly it. It had to be at the end because if it were anywhere else then missing it would result in the rest of the itinerary being cancelled, too.

However, those were the good ol’ days. It used to be you could book simple domestic 3Xs that you might actually use and still get a 100% dump. In fact, that was just about the time I learned how to do this, so I’m very disappointed I could never take advantage because some were very convenient for me. Such is life.

Now if you want to get creative you have to move the 3X to the beginning of the itinerary. This is called a “1X” because it comes first instead of third. But unlike a 3X, you actually have to fly the 1X. The “X” has been preserved for consistency so that everyone knows what purpose the flight serves, but it doesn’t mean you should “strike” it like a 3X.

Searching for and booking a 1X is pretty much the same as it is for a 3X, but they generally work better and are more common. Not that common, but a noticeable improvement over a 3X. Because you NEED to fly a 1X, it helps if you’re the sort of person who can plan trips months in advance. A 1X is not necessarily going to be any more convenient than a 3X, which means you have to know that you’ll just happen to be in the Middle East and available to fly a one-way trip in order to dump the YQ on a trip to Asia two months later.

You Don’t Have to Dump the Fuel on Just ONE Trip

Remember how I told you that a 3X is often direction-specific? Well sometimes, but not always, X-Y can work as a 3X and Y-X can work as a 1X. That means you can book three trips at once!

• Itinerary A: (1) A-B, (2) B-A, (3) X-Y
• Itinerary B: (1) Y-X, (2) C-D, (3) D-C

If X-Y dumps the fuel as a 3X for itinerary A and Y-X dumps the fuel as a 1X for itinerary B, then you have two dumped trips as well as a more convenient way to use your 1X.

You can also book a 5X, which involves two round trips, A-B-A,C-D-C followed by the 5X at the end. Similar combinations and extensions of this strategy are out there, but it requires a bigger commitment up front.

Open Jaws Are Your Friend

If you need to fly a 1X, what better way to take advantage of it than to fill the gap in an open jaw? To remind you, an open jaw is an itinerary where you fly in or out of a different airport at either your origin or destination, e.g., (1) SFO-LHR, (2) FRA-SFO. A double open jaw is where you choose different airports at both ends, e.g., (1) SFO-LHR, (2) FRA-LAX.

Usually the rule is that the “jaw” portion of a trip must be shorter than either of the flown legs. This means they are likely to be short trips, and short trips make great 3Xs. (An open jaw is a great travel hacking strategy in general. For example, so you can fly into one European city, backpack through several countries, and then fly out of your eventual destination.)

Again, you need to plan several itineraries in advance, but if you know there is a 1X in South America, for example, you could book an open jaw itinerary to South America (and use a 3X to save some fuel) and fly that 1X while you’re there. The 1X can then be used to dump the fuel on a separate itinerary to Africa that doesn’t work well with any 3Xs.

Be Creative and Experiment with Fuel Dumps

Hopefully you’re starting to realize just how creative you can be with your fuel dumping strategy. A 3X doesn’t work because it’s the third flight. It works for other reasons governed by fare and ticketing rules. If you can put that 3X in a different position, whether first, or fifth, or in combination with a 4X, then you have many more options available to you.

I’ve only described some of the more common examples. If you aren’t able to dump your fare using a first approach, try some others and see if you have better luck. I’ve also left out some of the tips I’ve learned about fuel dumping, such as a few things to look for in the fare rules for a candidate fare and which airlines tend to be easier to dump. Remember, the more you learn to practice finding and booking dumped itineraries on your own, the easier this will become. Don’t let yourself become too focused on the examples I provide just because I happened to spell out a few of the common ones.

Fuel dumping involves some sharing and camaraderie in the online forums, but it is ultimately an individual challenge of you against the computer, trying to find that one flight that will save you hundreds of dollars.

This post was originally published on Travel Codex.

BryanIAH just shared a new mileage “jog” on his blog, mileagerunning.com. At 4.6 cpm, it’s not the greatest. We both admit that. But Mexico City sounds like a lot of fun to me, and you can go visit Carlos Slim’s new museum. This is one of those cases where you should be willing to pay a little more for the opportunity to visit for more than a few hours.

Although direct connections on US Airways are available, the trick here is that you’re allowed two connections in each direction, which will allow you to boost the number of miles earned significantly. Something like SEA-PHX-CLT-MEX and back. I’ll leave you to visit his blog to read the rest of the details.

Let me add a touch of suspense for those who are interested in fuel dumping. Flights to Mexico don’t generally have YQ, but they can be used in some creative routings to bring that CPM down to zero. And for those interested in accumulating US Airways Dividend miles, you can earn a 40K bonus by signing up for the US Airways credit card from Barclays, which also comes with a 5K mile discount on award travel booked on US Airways flights.

This post was originally published on Travel Codex.

Part of the Frequent Traveler University is a special session on “top secret” information that is not to be shared openly. Everyone was sworn to secrecy, and I’m not going to talk here in specifics about what was said. But it was interesting some of the information that was released because these expert tips have the potential to cause some serious problems if used by inexperienced travelers.

(By the way, I had a great time in LA this weekend. If this is the kind of stuff that interests you, I highly recommend trying to make it to the next FTU at Tysons Corner in Virginia in April, 2013.)

I’m not here to tell you not to use what you learned, but I think it’s in my interest and the interest of everyone else to remind you to be very careful. I think the same wisdom applies to sensitive information readers learn elsewhere, from FTU or a friend. I’m not talking about ethical concerns for the rest of this post. I’m just interested in practical considerations.

Sometimes the information is as simple as a code that provides a sizeable discount, or maybe even some bonus points. Simple but powerful. The ease of using such a code to save money might make you think that the information is inconsequential. You could tell a friend in passing just like sharing a telephone number and say, hey, I just saved him twenty bucks.

But maybe your friend will tell two other people, and those people tell two other people, and so on. And those people may not be as responsible as you about sensitive information. I’m not arguing against sharing such information in the first place, but realize that not everyone is equally invested in keeping the game going for as long as possible. Are you sharing a code with your grandmother so she can save money when she travels two times a year? How much will it really benefit her, and is she just going to gossip with her friends? If I shared some of these tricks with family members, I know at least a few would blab about it to the agent.

As easy as it is to share a discount code, it is just as easy for a travel company to change the code if it notices that it is being abused. Gary and Tommy both shared experiences about codes that were shut down because they were overused.

Second, there is information that is not easy to use, that goes way over the head of your average traveler, even one who frequents FlyerTalk and MilePoint. But it may still be tempting. Fuel dumps are but one example. I shared some information about this before, and I was intentionally vague about specifics.

An inexperienced person is more likely to request an upgrade, a same-day change, or some other idiotic move that gets the attention of a human. When a human looks at a ticket that includes a fuel dump, he or she is going to wonder why you have a random segment on the other side of the world and how you managed to book a ticket to Europe for under $500.

Let’s not even consider the risk to the community that the dump may get killed. That inexperienced person could also show up at the airport and find a bill for $200-400 to cover the fuel surcharge he thought was previously taken care of.

There are, in my mind, three kinds of deals.

Loopholes, bonuses, and just plain generous policies create evergreen deals that anyone can take advantage easily. It might seem like a scam at times, but really you’re just following the published rules and taking the maximum advantage. The 5X deal with Vanilla Reload cards is an example.

Then there are the deals that will die anyway, like a bonfire on the beach. You only brought so much wood with you. You can nurse a small fire all night, or you can burn it all at once and have a party. Keeping the deal secret doesn’t really change how much benefit is derived, only how many people get to share in that benefit. Mistake fares fall in this category.

Truly sensitive information is like a tree tapped to produce maple syrup. It only makes so much and at a limited rate. Drive too many taps into the tree and you’ll kill it. One inexperienced person in over his head could kill it all by himself by cutting too deep.

So again, I’m not saying you shouldn’t use the secret tips you learn from FTU or other sources. But if those tips still confuse you, take that as a warning sign. Maybe you need to study it longer to figure out just how and how often to take advantage without creating problems for others. More about everything else I learned at FTU (outside the secret session) coming up soon.

This post was originally published on Travel Codex.

I was contacted two weeks ago by a reporter at The Economist who wanted to do a piece on fuel dumping for Gulliver, their business travel column. His email was pretty clear that he didn’t want any 3Xs, but rather was looking for insight into how and why it actually works. I talked to him for about 30 minutes and gave him the best explanation I could, but I didn’t expect it to ever get published since he seemed to be looking for a level of technical detail that only an airline or organization like the ATPCO (Airline Tariff Publishing Company) would be able to provide.

And while some people will probably send me hate mail for talking to him at all, he already had a fair understanding of how fuel dumping works just by reading the forums on FlyerTalk and elsewhere. I don’t think I gave him anything new other than a quote. My attitude can be summed up by our conversation at the end of the call, when he asked if I had any reservations about the article: “Frankly, I think most readers of The Economist have better things to do with their time. If you have other ways to earn money, it makes more sense to do that and pay a higher fare. But for some people, it’s a challenge. It’s fun.”

I don’t fuel dump anymore. I know other people who don’t fuel dump anymore, or who are very selective. Apparently United has been running audits on some people’s reservations and following up with phone calls. American has always made it difficult to apply upgrades since they are processed manually, creating an opportunity for review.

And by and large the tricks have become more difficult to find and implement, such that the opportunity cost of getting started and maintaining a stable of working tricks is rarely worth the financial savings. The traditional 3X is now often replaced with more complicated substitutes, and ITA is no longer the “easy” way to search for fuel dumps that it once was.

The airlines are apathetic, too, which is why fuel dumping is still around. Piecemeal fixes have always been possible when a trick gets too popular, but larger fixes aren’t possible without significant IT investment. Do you really think United is going to attack a small leak like fuel dumping when it can’t manage its own day-to-day operations? How many mistake fares (both revenue and award) did it have this year? They have bigger concerns.

And indeed most of the big holes have been plugged, with Airfare Watchdog making a splash before I even figured it out. It’s difficult enough that beginners find it harder and harder to find that first dump that keeps them motivated to continue. The marginal cost of fixing the remaining holes is prohibitive unless an airline starts to attract a significant number of bookings. There are audits that notice this kind of thing. If an airline normally sells 10 tickets a day on the Miami-London route and now it’s selling 100 — while tickets with other East Coast departures remain stable — that looks suspicious.

I don’t think fuel dumping is going to end any time soon. It is just not what it once was and hasn’t been for a long time. Which is why I tell people who want to get started, it’s great if you find it fun and entertaining, but don’t expect to take a stab at it this weekend and book a trip on Monday morning. Do it because you like a puzzle.

This post was originally published on Travel Codex.

@airfarewatchdog has been tweeting all morning about cheap fares they find from the U.S. to Central and Eastern European cities. These appear to be mistakes that are not including the proper fuel surcharges when you attempt to purchase them.

I’m not sure if deals are already be disappearing. I was able to search for a couple of the city pairs AFWD suggested on ITA Matrix and get similar prices for some routes and not others. The ones where I found similar prices often had different connecting flights. But looking at the fare breakdown in ITA, it did show that the fuel surcharge was not included as it should be (look for a line that says YQ or YR).

Furthermore, when I went to book these flights on AA.com, I again found different connecting cities than on ITA Matrix. And prices initially seemed higher when I selected an outbound flight. Then I went to pick a return and saw that it LOWERED the fare by over $200. This is unusual. Usually the return options all list an increase or no change in fare.

This is a great opportunity for fall travel if you had plans to go to Europe. The deals are not from every U.S. city, and they are not to every European city. In some cases it’s still not that cheap because the base fare is high enough, but you should still be saving $300-400 in many cases. Fares from some East Coast airports are under $500.

Remember that you can hold flights on AA.com for up to 24 hours without booking. So consider holding several flights now and making your decision later if you want to proceed and book. Unlike some other carriers, you do not have the chance to cancel your flight within 24 hours after you have paid — carriers are required to offer one option or the other, and AA chooses to offer a 24-hour hold.

One major caveat in my book: As far as I can tell, all of these mistake fares include several codeshare flights sold by American Airlines but operated by partners, including US Airways. That could complicate your ability to use one of AA’s systemwide upgrades if you have Executive Platinum status. I don’t really want to make two or more connections (including positioning flights within the U.S.) and do the whole thing in coach. Others will behave a better opportunity to take advantage if their home airport is included in the mistake.

This post was originally published on Travel Codex.

Many readers are understandably concerned about the cost of fees and taxes when they book award travel. You worked so hard to earn those miles for a “free” trip, and now you still have to pay up!

Fuel surcharges can bring the total fees to over $1,000 per person (like the example of a British Airways first class award I recently booked — and am having second thoughts about). Other times the fees are almost nothing. One of the best ways to save money on travel is to familiarize yourself with the rules as early as possible.

Identifying Fuel Surcharges

You can predict in advance if your award ticket will have a fuel surcharge. Just look up the same flight on ITA Matrix, pretending that you were going to pay for it instead. On the last page you’ll see a blue box with the fare breakdown, which can be organized into three parts:

1. The base fare (possibly more than one).
2. The fuel surcharge (may or may not exist).
3. The fees and taxes (always exist; variable number).

The miles you redeem for your award ticket will always cover the base fare and will never cover the fees and taxes — you pay those. This post concerns what happens with the fuel surcharge, typically labeled with a “YQ” or “YR.”

Know the Rules of Your Airline

If nothing else, remember that you must follow the rules of the program that holds your miles. If you’re using Singapore Airlines miles, for example, then KrisFlyer sets the rules even if your ticket will be for travel on Lufthansa or United or ANA. If you don’t like the rules of your program, find another. You can use United’s MileagePlus miles to book the same awards on all of those carriers. That’s the great thing about partners and alliances: you have options.

Fortunately some airlines don’t have fuel surcharges at all. One less thing to worry about! Or maybe the airline has fuel surcharges, but they are lower or don’t apply to certain routes. These are often shorter routes or routes within the same continent, but here’s an example of a Cathay Pacific flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong. The fuel surcharge is only $58.20 (and you still won’t pay it if you use American Airlines miles to book).

Unfortunately, some airlines and routes have pretty hefty surcharges, which means you need to know if you’re going to be responsible for paying them.

Never a Fuel Surcharge

United Airlines is one of the largest loyalty programs that never imposes a fuel surcharge on award tickets. If you have United miles, it’s rare that you’ll need to pay much more than $100 per person for an award ticket. All awards will still have some taxes and fees starting at $5-25 for domestic flights and $50-100 for international flights, but these are unavoidable.

Almost Always a Fuel Surcharge

Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines, British Airways, and ANA almost always impose fuel surcharges on award tickets booked with their miles.

There are some exceptions. British Airways doesn’t collect fuel surcharges when you use Avios to travel on Aer Lingus, LAN, or Air Berlin. ANA doesn’t collect fuel surcharges when you use Mileage Club miles to travel on United. But such exceptions are rare. If you have these miles, I recommend you think about trips you can take on routes that don’t have fuel surcharges to begin with.

Sometimes a Fuel Surcharge

Most airlines fall into a grey area that makes it difficult to remember which award will have surcharges and which will not. (That’s another way of saying if there are errors in this post, you’ll probably find them here.)

American Airlines and Alaska Airlines are like United in that they almost never impose fuel surcharges — except when you book travel on British Airways or Iberia. (Alaska is not partners with Iberia, so just British Airways for them.) The British Airways surcharges can be among the highest in the industry, often over $400, and as far as I know every partner collects them even if their rules for other carriers generous. You can’t escape them. Fortunately, Iberia’s fuel surcharges are in the more reasonable range of $100-200.

Delta Air Lines imposes fuel surcharges if you fly on a Delta flight that originates outside the U.S. or if you fly some partners, including Aeroflot, Air Europa, Air Tahiti Nui, China Airlines, China Eastern, China Southern, and Kenya Airways. Delta does not collect fuel surcharges on its own flights that originate within the U.S. or on other partners.

Aeroplan (Air Canada) also has a mix of rules broken down by carrier. They’ll collect the fuel surcharge on Air Canada, Asiana, Lufthansa, Thai, ANA, and a few others. But there’s no fuel surcharge collected for flights on SAS, Singapore Airlines, Turkish, EgyptAir, EVA, Brussels, Ethiopian, Air China, or United.

Avoiding Fuel Surcharges

I said earlier that you had to follow the rules of your loyalty program, the account that actually holds your miles. The airline you fly on isn’t a decision maker. But even a program that always collects fuel surcharges can’t collect what doesn’t exist. Not all flights have a fuel surcharge in the first place. One of the best uses of Avios points is to book domestic flights on American Airlines and Alaska Airlines that have no surcharges.

Second, you can be more conscious about what sorts of miles you earn. Singapore Airlines’ KrisFlyer is a partner with Air Canada’s Aeroplan and United’s MileagePlus, among others. KrisFlyer collects fuel surcharges for awards on its own flights. Aeroplan and MileagePlus do not. So earn miles with Aeroplan or MileagePlus if you plan to book an award on Singapore Airlines. Just be aware that there are some good reasons to stick with an airline that collects fuel surcharges:

• Different policies on expiring miles, if you’re an infrequent traveler.
• Different routing rules, which might make an award more valuable (see routing rules for American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, and United Airlines).
• Different award charts that permit using fewer miles for the same award.

You can earn miles with a flexible reward currency like Membership Rewards or Ultimate Rewards that you can transfer to multiple airlines. In this example, Membership Rewards can be transferred to both Aeroplan and KrisFlyer, and Ultimate Rewards can be transferred to both MileagePlus and KrisFlyer.

Remember I said that sometimes the same award can require more or fewer miles in different programs? If there’s no fuel surcharge, transfer to the program that requires fewer miles. If there are surcharges, consider transferring to the program that doesn’t collect it even if you’ll need more miles.

Finally, sometimes destination matters more than anything. Look at the two examples I provided above: one is a British Airways flight to London and the other is a Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong. You can use American Airlines miles to book either one, and if you do you’ll only have to pay the fuel surcharge for the British Airways flight. But ignore this. The other taxes and fees are also hugely different: $236.90 on British Airways and just $78.50 on Cathay Pacific. Fuel surcharge or not, you’ll often find some parts of the world like Asia and South America are much cheaper to visit than Europe.

This post was originally published on Travel Codex.