British Airways is <i>notorious</i> for having an unfavorably skewed ticket price to YQ surcharge ratio.<p>Part of the reason they do this is because it allows them to book revenue for &quot;free&quot; award tickets: since your miles only cover the ticket component of the package and none of the fuel surchages, they can wring money from passengers who would otherwise be dead weight on the balance sheet.<p>I recently booked an award ticket on BA metal (I know, mistake -- but it was an emergency) that cost me something like $500 in fuel surcharges and assorted taxes. As it turns out, in airline speak free doesn&#x27;t actually mean free.