Airlines charge all kinds of taxes and fees on tickets, some of which are government mandated, and others of which are carrier imposed. One of Europe’s largest airline groups will shortly be adding a new environmental surcharge to tickets, which is sure to be controversial.
Continue reading: Lufthansa Adds New Environmental Surcharge To Tickets
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
The local baseball team recently had a promotion in which they offered to sell tickets at list price, i.e. without tacking on a cascading litany of fees. Given the average attendance at games, I suspect they'd be wise to consider more drastic measures...
Anyways, point being, as long as entities (airlines, baseball teams, ticketmaster, etc.) can get away with these games, they'll keep playin' them.
Pure and simple : " . . . just charge what you’re going to charge, and call it a day. A lot of costs in the airline industry have gone up over the years, but each increase doesn’t need to be broken down for the consumer to see. For example, there’s no “increased labor cost surcharge” on tickets . . . "
If I cancel a nonrefundable fare, I get back taxes etc. . Will this surcharge also be refunded?
One wonders: Why not just raise the ticket price?
Actually you forgot another Lufthansa subsidiary, the vacation airline subsidiary Sunexpress, albeit a joint venture with Turkish Airlines.
This is why we need more regulation, not less. The airlines are battling Washington to be able to advertise fares without these made up junk fees, which they would like to tack on at the very end, after you click on pay.
Always surprising that there are some right-wing nutcases who read your blog. I guess losers need to read at some point too.
Good that they have regulations. They probably don't fold it into the ticket price because it makes it easier to do math.
will be interesting to see how many people bail out of the booking process when they see these fees added and go to other airlines - some of which are certain not to add their own "environmental" fees
WSJ has an articled on this topic in today's paper.
Disgusting.
The great news is that Lufthansa is a terrible airline these days, so this is just another reason to avoid that clown airline.
The problem is if other airlines follow suit...
This is bu!!$h!t. How are we supposed to take Lufthansa seriously when they make greenwashing weasel moves like this?
If the EU makes it more expensive for LH to operate, then they have to pass on the cost in some way. Any business owner should get this. Its best to best transparent in this way, but I agree that all these add ons are ridiculous.
I was booking at parking spot at YUL and the charges includes tax and a fuel surcharge. for a parking spot! Thought that was nuts.
AFKLM has been charging it for over a year… France and Sweden had rules before the EU.
No one? It’s the law that the price shown include all taxes and fees I doubt many people are sticker shocked at the end of the booking process when you’ve seen the price. Air France charges this fee as well and yet i’ve consistently seen some Air France fares lower than Lufthansa and vice versa. There are a million fees and taxes and honestly no one really is doing an analysis of them when booking
I bet that the airlines in Europe don’t care for the surcharge either. There is no revenue for the airline and it inflates the actual cost of a ticket. And for the silly people that don’t notice how rapidly the planet is warming, there is something seriously wrong with you!
It’s the same reason Ryanair charges an EC261 fee: To passively protest to the EU that regulation gets past onto the consumer. Air France has had this fee for a while now and if i recall correctly emailed their members about it. CEO Ben Smith says that the regulatory environment in Europe is unfair and so these types of actions are designed to say « see, we are passing these costs onto European consumers ». It’s only a matter of time before the low costs do it as well, if they haven’t already.
no one? like I live in NY and when I was to pass a bridge to go to Manhattan and pass EZ-Pass (back when they were gates), I didn’t just u-turn and nope out.
Another profit maker in the form of the climate change grift. Notice said grift won't apply to private jet travel.
It's really just a way to increase public pressure, Ryanair has been doing this kind of stuff for years. Ultimately, it won't affect the total price, because total price is whatever market is willing to pay. Lufthansa - and any other airline for that matter - will always charge the highest fare they can get away with without losing revenue. It's not going to work, btw, most people just look at the total price and never bother with the fees breakdown.
That's not how it works. If people were willing to pay say 20€ more, Lufthansa would already be charging 20€ more on the fare itself. Ultimately you have to offer a final price that enough people are willing to pay for, no matter what fees, taxes and other nonsense make up that price.
In the US, DOT requires all-in pricing, which means that the fare you see must include all taxes and surcharges. A 2023 ruling by the European Court of Justice similarly requires airlines to display all-in pricing. So either LH Group will have to reduce its fares to negate the impact of this fee, or take a competitive hit.
I hope they will stop asking at the end of the booking process, if I am willing to pay a small additional fee for some "environmental" things. I think Swiss did this sometimes, if I remember correctly.
Don't confuse the corporate greed on display here with actual climate change initiatives, which the planet desperately needs.
Those pseudo-eco-friendly policies do nothing but make people want to stop caring about the environment.
Are using paper straws and reusable bags supposed to protect the nature, when some hypocrites like Taylor Swift are traveling on their private jets more than necessarily, after saying that they will fight against the climate change?
So your solution is to just raise prices and let people assume it's LH raising margins? The point of adding a surcharge is to get people to think its the EU's fault prices are going up. Call it marketing or what ever, but its a very comon practice in many industries.
I suspect they're testing the German and European governments' tolerance at scam fees. Scam pricing is generally not allowed in Europe, but regulators also seem to give more leeway to green initiatives. LH certainly has a secondary angle here.
That's the great petrol lie of our age. "The world is suffering pollution and it's your fault. Be sure to recycle plastic (90% of it is trash and not recycled), pay plastic bag fees (just goes to tax authorities, hopefully to environmental causes.)"
There's no responsibility on businesses to stop using cheap packaging and bags made of petrol. Just shame your customers.
Reminds me of Spirit Airlines' $2 "unintended consequences of DOT Regulation" fee.
I think you misread Mika's comment -- they were not quoting you, they were replying "no one [will bail out]."
Where in Europe do bag fees go to the government? Over here the business gets to keep them. The goal isn't to increase revenue or finance some eco projects, the goal is to make people not use plastic bags and create the problem in the first place.
Re @T-: No, it didn't. There is no such surcharge charged by government as evidenced by the fact that most European airlines don't charge it. Lufthansa is simply converting part of the fare into a separate item on the fees breakdown to create political pressure. That's all.
Scam pricing refers to showing one price at first and then adding fees later. That's not what Lufthansa is doing. In Europe, the final price must be displayed from the very first moment and nothing is changing about this.
Fantastic idea! I think all businesses should do this. Buy a car get environmental surcharge of 5%. Tell consumer it will help global warming! Buy ham and eggs get s 10% environmental surcharge to stop global warming. Those Germans are brilliant. No wonder they followed Hitler. Trump should call his 10% import tax an environmental fee. Right wing loves anything Trump does. Long live the Fatherland
What a con, is every flight going to powered by some SAF? Will the customer get a refund if the actual flight you are on is AvGas only (probably every long haul flight into Germany as SAF basically unavailable outside Europe.
It is just another tax dressed up as holy green crap.
Ok but that’s not the same? Most people go on google flights, see the « all in » pricing and move ahead. It’s not like it says the ticket is $100 and then when you go to pay it’s $101. It’s $101, and maybe competitors are $110 dollars and so regardless it makes sense to book LH.
No. France and Sweden have these rules already. In France, there’s a 1 percent average SAF requirement. The EU starts at 2 percent and goes up to 6 percent in 2030. Whether your individual flight is has SAF is irrelevant, you’re subsidising other flights or your flight is behind heavily subsidised by thousands of other passengers. 2 percent isn’t a lot and SAF is expensive and as you mentioned has constraints for most of LH’s network.
For a moment, I thought it was a mandatory offset program. That would be somewhat more tolerable. But it's just a "We have some increased costs so we're going to pass them on to you, but we won't quote it as part of the ticket cost but instead make up some scam category for it" fee.