British Airways and Virgin Atlantic agree to pay back illegal fuel surcharges

Business Travel Online reported Friday that BA and Virgin owe US and UK travelers for artificially high fuel surcharges. Apparently the two airlines decided to get together and raise the “fuel surcharge” for their tickets between August 11th, 2004 and March 23, 2006.

According to the article:

The firm said 8 million U.S. and U.K. customers are entitled to cash settlements. Through the settlement announced today, British Airways and Virgin are making available a total of $59 million for U.S. passengers and £73.5 million for U.K. passengers who were subject to fuel surcharges paid during the timeframe.

The details on how you get cash back are a bit muddy given that a lot of business travelers pay for tickets a lot of different ways (though a central office, personal reimbursement, etc).

The firm handling the case, Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, said they would launch a web site to help people figure out the details. It’s not live yet, but when it is, it should be here.

[ Update: It turns out they decided to put the site here instead. ]