Ummm....fuel prices are a lot lower now than a little while ago.
I wonder when the airlines will stop using "very high fuel prices" as the reason for adding a large sum to each ticket price, refusing "discounts" etc etc, so as to increase revenue. Most of the "surcharge" is now just extra fare income, and goes straight through to the bottom line.
There was a time recently when the total fuel bill could very nearly have been paid from the absurdly high "fuel surcharges", especially on full long-haul flights with some well-known Legacy carriers. Those bonanza days are over, but the fuel surcharge is still a major rip-off.
I can appreciate that fuel surcharges are an irritation and will be resented - However, given the number of airlines that have failed, are about to fail and will fail in the short/medium term future, isn't it just possible that a certain level of fuel surcharge is appropriate? Surely it cannot be unreasonable to charge a market price that enables a company to survive: Ultimately, the market will determine whether that price is appropriate and therefore the survival of that company. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, with respect, to blanket ALL fuel surcharges as a rip-off is a slightly odd perspective?