Just sharing an interesting observation by a friend today. We all know that BA can be really greedy when it comes to carrier-imposed surcharges, a.k.a. YQ, which adds to the cost of redemption tickets.

There are a few countries / regions in the world where YQ is strictly prohibited or limited, which means you pay very little fee for one-way outbound award tickets. Hong Kong and Brazil are two typical examples – Hong Kong revoked this regulation a couple of years back though, but interestingly very few airlines decided to increase their surcharge since, apart from Cathay Pacific.

Not sure if Japan has exercised a similar law or something, but BA’s flight departing from Tokyo carries a very low surcharge at the moment:

Going to the next page and you can see the actual fee is even lower than advertised, finalised to £26.6.

This is the same case for a return flight too, which is very rare. £244 is a very generous price considering a large percentage of it is UK APD.

If you want to visit Japan, it may be a good time to lock in the ticket given the wide availability and low surcharges. We’re still uncertain when Japan is going to welcome tourists again though – I’m hoping soon as I’ve got ANA first class ticket booked for Christmas…