BA and Virgin to shell out $210 million

Trans-Atlantic passengers who flew between the United States and the United Kingdom between August 11th, 2004 and March 23rd, 2006 will have a third of their fuel surcharge refunded by both British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, after a San Francisco district court found both airlines guilty of collusion and fixing high fuel taxes.

Another hearing is scheduled for September 12th to finalise the process, but if it sticks, the two British airlines are set to pay out a total of $210 million to passengers. The class action lawsuit was launched on behalf of 5.1 million passengers, and this comes after British Airways was charged last year with price fixing and had to pay out $550 million to affected passengers.

Virgin managed to avoid criminal charges last year as even though it was the one who tipped BA off about fuel surcharges, allowing the two companies to fix prices and gouge the customers. Viring pulled this off by blowing the whistle and cooperating with US and UK investigatiors.