Virgin announced its plans to reduce prices yesterday afternoon and BA followed suit this morning with exactly the same reductions. Neither airline has lowered the surcharge for its premium customers.

From midnight, BA World Traveller passengers will pay £13 less on longer sectors and £10 less on shorter sectors. World Traveller Plus passengers will pay £6.50 less on longer sectors and £5 on shorter sectors. The changes will mean the surcharge for long haul flights of more than nine hours will drop by £13 per flight from £109 per flight to £96 per flight. The surcharge for long haul flights of less than nine hours will drop by £10 per flight from £78 per flight to £68 per flight.

Meanwhile, Economy passengers with Virgin Atlantic will pay £10 less on shorter sectors and £13 less on longer sectors, while Premium Economy passengers will pay £5 less on shorter sectors and £6.50 less on longer sectors.

But for Upper Class passengers there is no reduction.

A spokesman for Virgin said: "Upper Class passengers pay more as their space and baggage allowances onboard are much greater.

"Also, Virgin Atlantic is still paying just under half of the rise in the cost of fuel since we introduced the charges initially (in 2004) and we are not passing these costs back to our passengers."

For shorter sectors, the new fuel charges will be £68 for Economy and £83 for Premium Economy, but will remain at £98 for Upper Class.

On longer sectors - Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Beijing Tokyo, Shanghai, Sydney, Mauritius, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Hong Kong - charges will be £96, £114.50 and £133 respectively.