With oil prices spiraling toward $40-a-barrel mark, what does that mean for travelers?

The price of oil has fallen off a cliff. No really. Doesn’t this look like a cliff to you?

Oil is now trading near a four-year low, say our friends over at the WSJ. And the momentum is “hard to stop.”

What does this mean for us?

Here are a few thoughts …

No more fuel surcharges. Any remaining fuel surcharges, either for airlines or cruise lines, must be eliminated soon. Travelers also expect these companies to hedge their fuel responsibly, so that future price increases will be factored into the cost of a ticket. In other words, the public won’t tolerate any sudden and retroactive fuel surcharges in the future, because we’ve already had our warning.

Here come the drivers! The Transportation Department has been complaining about a shortfall in road tax revenue. Wait until next summer, when a lot of pent-up demand to hit the road sees hundreds of thousands of vehicles unleashed on American highways. With gas this cheap, the only thing that could keep us off the road would be a depression. And that’s increasingly unlikely.

A pushback on other fees. Airlines (and some hotels) were easily able to introduce new fees that had nothing to do with higher fuel costs, but were blamed on soaring energy prices. (For example, the $15 first-checked-bag-fee, which was actually part of a long-planned airline “unbundling” strategy, not an effort to recoup higher fuel prices.) As energy costs circle the drain, and airline profits rise, I would expect to see some significant resistance to these ill-advised surcharges.

How about you? What do you think lower fuel costs will mean to travelers?

Tagged as: fees, fuel prices, surcharges