Yesterday I wrote about the class action settlement over fuel surcharges imposed by British Airways on U.S. customers between November 9, 2006 and April 17, 2013.
If you paid these surcharges you’re entitled to either points or cash at your preference.
Here are the points amounts:
- 12,500 Avios if you redeemed once
- 20,000 Avios if redeemed 2-5 times
- 35,000 Avios if you redeemed 6+ times
Alternatively you can receive 16.9% of the cash cost of the surcharges back (potentially more if the Court doesn’t approve ~ 35% of the total settlement going to the attorneys).
If you want the points, you don’t have to do anything. If you want the cash you have to complete a short form.
You can now look up what you’ll get on the settlement website, and choose cash or points.
- Go to Benefit Lookup and File a Claim
- Enter your ‘Unique ID’. This is the 10 letters and numbers at the top of the email you likely received Friday morning, though you might have ignored it as junk. The sender is ‘Fuel Surcharge Class Action’ and the subject ‘Dover v. British Airways Fuel Surcharge Class Action Notice’. If you don’t have this email and believe you paid fuel surcharges during this period of time you’ll need to reach out to info@fuelsurchargeclassaction.com.
Here’s the offer that one of the accounts I manage received:
This account must have redeemed miles 2-5 times spending a total of ~ $630 in fuel surcharges.
Commenter Steve who flagged that this went live before promised (Sunday) shares his offer,
The benefit options page is now live on the settlement website.
They are offering me 35,000 Avios or $955. Not bad.
We can infer that Steve redeemed 6 or more awards during the covered period and paid out ~ $5650 in fuel surcharges. That’s amazing — over $5000 in extra charges straight to British Airways’ bottom line (not taxes) as a penalty for redeeming miles.
It seems to me that Steve is clearly better off taking the cash, while the account I managed referenced above that’s offered 20,000 miles or $107 should take the points.
Sadly British Airways stopped calling these member taxes ‘fuel surcharges’ (which legally have to be related to the cost of fuel) and started calling them ‘surcharges’ (money for nothing) and they can keep on penalizing Avios redemptions to their heart’s content.
whoo hoo…..
Avios Option: 20,000 miles
Cash Option: $304.68
I know I redeemed once for 3 people RT including one a Chase card companion ticket plus possible one other trip. My math makes it I paid $1,800 in surcharges, ouch.
I will take the cash.
This is Steve (referenced above). Yes, Gary, the $955 looks like the best option for me.
It seems odd that the Avios payments are fixed amounts, but the cash payments are individualized to each account. I wonder why.
Also, I need to do some research about the redemptions I made during this period for Household Account members, 2-4-1 companions, family & friends, etc. So far, I can’t tell if they are included in the $955, or if they can submit their own settlement claim. Any data from you or your readers would be greatly appreciated.
$5.69 or 12,500 Avios – sweet!!
If a US resident redeemed Avios for QR or CX flights, is he entitled to any claim
20,000 Avios or $497.72, no brainer which to choose.
@Steve, I did Household Account redemptions and I was the only one offered the claim, looks like the main account holder gets all of the settlement.
thanks for this reminder….really!
Redeemed Avios for CX in this time period. Confirmation email explicitly used the term ‘fuel surcharges’. No email anywhere… including the spam.
Thank you! I’m choosing 20K miles over $54.57 cash! Gee, I remember using Avios in 2013 to fly Niki from Crete to Salzburg Austria (no FC, just 12 euros of Greek departure tax) and Air Berlin from Tegel to JFK. I can’t remember before that!
From what I gathered, the settlement includes $27,125,000 for cash claims (BA gets to keep whatever isn’t used- as opposed to donating it to charity or adjusting claims) and/or 2,228,677,500 Avios. If for some reason cash claims exceed that amount (they don’t say where they got that number from), payouts will be prorated down. If we assume that 27.1 million figure is the maximum cash claims amount, then BA charged a whopping $160.5 million in YQ during the covered period.
Redeemed for NIKI. CX. MA. plus BA intra-EU in the settlement period between 2008 and 2013. Do not receive email.
@ Rob.
SO is the head of household on my account. I was offered $91 or 20K Avios. I redeemed 2-3 BA avios flights on BA metal, she redeemed none. Based on that, it seems that HOH does not necessarily get the points. I’m a happy camper. 20K avios that I wasn’t expecting is sweet.
Dumb question but just making sure since I don’t have the old ticket anymore:
I definitely used BA miles in 2011 for a US domestic flight on AA metal (JFK-KOA).
Pretty sure there’s zero chance that BA could have charged a fuel surcharge for a flight on AA metal, right?
At any rate, I got no email from BA about this.
Gary, I redeemed BA points twice in the covered period — for C class RT for myself and wife in 9/2011 to Prague from IAD, and in 5/13, again for myself and wife C class RT to Istanbul. Total of fees paid for both trips just under $3000. I have the receipts. But I received no email, and I’ve triple checked my inbox, spam folder, and deleted message folder for the past week. Any tips on the best way to obtain the required unique ID? Just send an email requesting it to the email address you provided (info@fuelsurchargeclassaction.com)? Thanks for any advice you are able to offer.
Will these Avios count for resetting the account expiration date?
Hi Gary
The “Unique Identifier” and “Class Member Identifier”can not be easily obtained even after contacting the 1 833 number and having written to the website.
Any suggestion?
Never received a unique ID or, indeed, any communication with BA about this. 2 round trips to Europe with my husband all paid for from my avios account during the correct time frame. I’m guessing BA never registered my new email address although I’m sure I had filled out the online forms correctly. I put in the correct email address on BA site but that does not seem to have helped. The phone number listed is just a recording, no one to ask. I’ve sent emails to the class-action suit folks over the last few days but so far no reply. Phone calls to BA on result in BA referring me to the website and phone number again. Any advice about how to proceed would be greatly appreciated
I am having the same results as stated by Kay. Phone cals, emails are going unanswered.
I have had the same address, telephone number, email and BA FF # for 20 years.
Any suggestions?