Airlines add all sorts of taxes and fees to their tickets, some of which are government-mandated, others imposed by the airlines. One of Europe’s largest airlines will soon add a new environmental surcharge to its tickets, which is sure to cause controversy.
Details on Lufthansa’s new environmental ticket surcharge
For tickets issued from June 26, 2024, and for travel from January 1, 2025, the Lufthansa Group will add a new environmental surcharge to the tickets.
This applies to all flights from all countries in the European Union, Great Britain, Norway and Switzerland. It also applies to all airlines in the Lufthansa Group, including Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian, Brussels, Eurowings, Air Dolomiti, Discover, Edelweiss, Lufthansa City and Lufthansa CityLine (does Lufthansa have enough airline brands?!).
The new surcharge is calculated per segment. You can find the prices below. As you can see, it starts at just $1 in Economy Class on short-haul flights and goes up to $72 in First Class on long-haul flights.
The exact amount of the surcharge will be shown in the price details in the last step of the booking process. For revenue tickets, this will probably mean that the fares will suddenly increase slightly based on the amounts mentioned above.
I’m curious if this also applies to award tickets, situations where a program doesn’t normally pass on surcharges imposed by the airline. I suspect not, but who knows…
What does Lufthansa’s new environmental tax cover?
According to Lufthansa, this new environmental cost surcharge covers additional costs resulting from legal environmental requirements, such as the European Union’s new requirement for sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) (“ReFuelEU Aviation”), adjustments to the European ETS system (“Emissions Trading System”) and other regulatory costs.
In fact, for travel from 2025 onwards, there are some new environmental initiatives being mandated by the government that will cost airlines quite a bit of money.
It’s perfectly fine that trying to make air travel more environmentally friendly comes at a cost and that those costs are ultimately passed on to consumers in some form. I think what frustrates people is that this is now another markup that the airlines are adding to the price of the ticket.
In my opinion, you should just charge the price you want to charge and be done with it. Many costs in the airline industry have increased over the years, but each increase does not need to be broken down for the consumer to see. For example, there is no “increased labor cost markup” on tickets, even though it represents significantly higher costs for most airlines.
I suspect the strategy here is two-pronged. First, it’s probably about reminding consumers of the costs that airlines have to bear, to create the impression that airlines aren’t pocketing as much. In addition, I imagine there might be a cost benefit here, whether that’s that the surcharge isn’t taxed or that travel agents don’t get a commission on that part of the ticket.
Bottom line
For tickets issued from June 26 and valid for travel from 2025, a new environmental surcharge will be charged on Lufthansa Group tickets, ranging from $1 to $72 per route. The Lufthansa Group justifies this by saying that new environmental regulations will be introduced from 2025 and the airline will therefore pass these costs on to consumers.
In my opinion, this should simply be included in the price of the flight and that would be the end of it. But I suspect the Lufthansa Group is taking the same approach here as with the “fuel surcharges”.
What do you think of Lufthansa’s new environmental tax?