airberlin levies air travel tax

In order to provide passengers, tour operators and sales partners with planning security, airberlin will start levying air travel tax through all booking channels in the course of this week. The air travel tax decided on by the German Federal Government on 1 September 2010, for bookings from 1 September 2010 onwards and applying to departures starting from 1 January 2011, will amount to EUR 8, 25 or 45, depending on the duration of the flight. Since Saturday last week, global flight reservation systems, such as the Amadeus booking system, have started to apply the air travel tax to airberlin flights, even though the airline company had not taken any initiative in this respect. The lawfulness of these actions is currently being verified by airberlin.

Since levying this tax at a later time would be very cumbersome, airberlin is forced to pass on the resulting cost increase to the passengers, without delay. Should the proposed air travel tax not be accepted in the course of the parliamentary decision-making procedure, airberlin will reimburse the air travel tax. airberlin will continue to fight against these charges which are unilaterally directed against the company. Not only is the tax a stimulus program benefiting foreign airline companies, it is also highly detrimental to competitiveness for flights within Germany, since the tax is levied without taking into account the ticket price or booking class. Moreover, freight and transit flights are exempted from the tax. Therefore, the tax disproportionately burdens those companies transporting more passengers on direct flights, thus benefiting those companies transporting more freight and transit passengers.