@JeffreyAlter tweets to me that there have been some changes to Aeroplan’s fuel surcharges… again.

On November 14 they said that we would have fuel surcharges coming for Asiana Airlines, Thai Airways International, All Nippon Airways, Austrian Airlines, LOT Polish Airlines, British Midland Airways, in addition to surcharges they were already imposing on Air Canada and Lufthansa reward flights (the Lufthansa change went into effect with no notice, and we were given 16 days’ notice on the others).

At the time they also say to expect fuel surcharges on December 14 for:

Aegean Airlines, Japan Airlines, TAM Airlines, South African Airways, TAP Portugal airlines

Well, they’ve apparently changed their minds about the December 14 implementation.

The list no longer includes Aegean, TAM, and TAP Air Portugal. And it no longer includes Japan Airlines which of course is not even an Aeroplan partner…!

It does, however, now include Adria Airlines.

What’s going on here? No idea, go figure, though they’ve said they can make changes at any time. They also offered a criteria for how they were deciding what to do, though it didn’t really make any sense relative to their actions. They explained that they were adding fuel surcharges to awards on partners whose own frequent flyer programs imposed fuel surcharges. Except that Swiss (Miles & More) and Singapore Airlines (KrisFlyer) weren’t included in the lsit of airlines where fuel surcharges were being imposed, despite their affiliated frequent flyer programs impossing fuel surcharges on awards. And those programs which impose such fees do so on all airlines where a paid fare includes a fuel surcharge regardless of what the frequent flyer program of that airline does.

Aeroplan seemed to be implying that the decision was driven by the partners they were booking awards on, though if you carefully parsed the language it was clear that the funds were being demanded by and passed onto Air Canada.

They really haven’t had their act together on this, either in terms of implementation or in terms of communication. Aeroplan has massively devalued itself over the past 6 months through the gutting of their award chart and the imposition of these charges, and they’ve shattered confidence by implementing these fees with no (Lufthansa) and little (several other Star parnters) notice.