Fuel Pressure on Qantas
Victor India, I bought a ticket yesterday (04/05) and no mention of increased fuel surcharge on the web site, but given QF's latest bleatings noone should be surprised if the surcharge is hiked. This one really gets up my nose so I've done a bit of basic research.
The oil price per barrel just prior to 9/11 was around $US23 and has basically been on an upward trend ever since. It is now peaking (we all hope) at around $US75 per barrel. At approximately 159 litres per barrel that works out at 47 cents (US) per ltre and at an SG of 0.78kg/litre just over 60 cents (US) per kg. At todays conversion rate we come to a total cost of about 78 cents (AUS) per kg. Remember that this is the total cost, not the percentage increase which the fuel surcharge is presumably intended to cover.
Now for a number of reasons I believe that it is reasonable to calculate the cost in fuel to load your last passenger (that is, the staff traveller) by looking at the fuel cost per extra tonne loaded. Interested to see other figures, but on my little ol' aeroplane, the last time I flew SYD-MEL this figure was only around 30kg/tonne and internationally around 300kg/tonne. So per 100kg of staff traveller with suitcase it costs QF about $AUS2.35 on the busiest routes (BNE-SYD-MEL). Have to admit it's a fair bit more SYD - PER - around $15.70. Still, having used pessimistic figures for all the calculations (no hedging here!), I can only conclude that the current $22 (plus GST!) per domestic sector and $70 per international sector is a gigantic rip-off and smacks of commercial exploitation. To further increase the surcharge would add insult to injury, or should I say, further lower the engagement level.