For the thirteenth time in four years, British Airways has raised its fuel surcharges. Passengers will rush to book flights before the new prices come into force next Tuesday. Many will find their preferred flights sold out. Many more will wonder whether BA and its rivals are using rising oil prices to camouflage rising profits. The suspicion is legitimate; BA's profits soared 44 per cent last year. But such profits were earned despite climbing fuel costs, not because of them, and will probably prove short-lived. The flying public would be wiser to accept that the age of cheap air travel is over, and tailor their plans accordingly.

From next week, the surcharge for a long-haul BA flight of more than nine hours will be £218 for a return ticket - 27 per cent more than this week and in many cases more than the basic fare. Any shock value to such figures is as much a function of the Office of Fair Trading's requirement that airlines make clear what proportion of their fares goes on fuel as it is of the price of fuel itself, which has long since been most airlines' biggest single cost. But the scale of the new surcharges will nonetheless deter passengers, ground surplus aircraft and trigger profit warnings such as that issued last week by Air France-KLM.

Airlines' shareholders can expect few dividends this year. Caribbean resorts should prepare for a slowdown in last-minute European bookings as travellers contemplate combined fuel charges of up to £872 for a family of four (even if Florida's beaches and theme parks stay popular with Britons, thanks to the strong pound). But consumers cannot claim to have been ambushed by events - or by the airlines.

The rising cost of jet fuel, which mirrors that of crude oil, is a long-term development, amply forecast, that cannot be absorbed by savings elsewhere in airlines' business models precisely because modern air travel is so energy-intensive. Almost any wage earner in the developed world with a modicum of financial discipline can afford, even at current fares, to cover in seven hours a distance than until the jet age would have taken seven days. This is little short of miraculous, but it is a miracle achieved only by burning roughly 70 tonnes of fuel per wide-bodied jet per transatlantic flight.

Relative to other crude oil derivatives, jet fuel is still cheap: because of the myriad obstacles to imposing a fair international taxation system it has, for decades, been tax-free. The environmental case for ending this anomaly is compelling. Indeed, evidence that carbon dioxide released by aircraft at 30,000 feet causes a far more pronounced warming effect than that released at ground level may make it overwhelming. In this context high fuel surcharges have an important silver lining: airlines will ground their least fuel-efficient aircraft first, and incentives for manufacturers to cut per-passenger carbon emissions with new technologies such as those pioneered on the Boeing Dreamliner will rise as steeply as the price of fuel.

The OFT has asked airlines to be more transparent about fuel surcharges, and they have obliged. The playing field on which BA competes is far from level in other ways but, on the price of fuel, passengers have all the information they need - including that it is cheaper to stay at home.