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As of May 1, Cathay Pacific Asia Miles is eliminating fuel surcharges on their own flights on most routes (the exception is departures from Japan and the Philippines, which will still have some amount of surcharge). So far, this has only been announced for revenue tickets. That said, I think there’s a good chance that they will eliminate these surcharges on award tickets also.
Mile Lion has the full scoop, but the short version of the story is that Cathay Pacific posted an update here indicating current fuel surcharges and that those surcharges will be “nil” (nothing) from May 1, 2020 on most routes. The note above the new chart says:
A fuel surcharge is included on all Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon tickets. The surcharge is on a per flight sector basis irrespective of fare type. It is included in the fare quoted on all our direct channels.
Sarting from May 1st, that surcharge is nothing on most routes. Since that sentence doesn’t differentiate between ticket types and says it is “irrespective of fare type”, I think it’s reasonable to guess that this will also be true for award tickets. We likely won’t know until May 1st as tickets are currently pricing out with fuel surcharges included.
Cathay Pacific’s fuel surcharges aren’t terribly high as it is, but the savings can certainly add up when traveling with a group. Given the COVID-19 situation, who knows if and when Cathay’s service will be back up and running at full capacity, but as of last fall award availability was pretty easy to come by in business class. I had no trouble finding space for 4 adults in business class flying direct from Hong Kong to Newark last year. As things slowly get back to normal whenever that is, I imagine award availability will likely once again be decent. If you’re looking to fly a family, a lack of fuel surcharges could therefore add up over four or five passengers.
Again, we don’t know that this will apply to award tickets but it’s probably safe to be hopefully optimistic. We’ll see in a couple of weeks.
H/T: Mile Lion
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I would hope this is only the beginning since jet fuel costs have come down so much.