A big thank you to whoever stuck this note onto our local ticket machine yesterday, and saving me a repeat of my previous experience!

Scheineinzug defekt

This summer the German Government introduced a new tax of flight tickets. It is called the Luftverkehrsabgabe, and means that passengers have to pay between 8 and 45 Euros per flight and applies to all commercial passenger flights that take-off at German airports from 1st Januar, 2011.

Just to make sure that people did not start booking their flights for next year early, the tax came into force on 1st September this year, so that it would be levied on any tickets purchased from that date onwards for flights in 2011.

One of the results has been that Ryanair have announced that they will be reducing the number of their flights from German airports, including Frankfurt-Hahn, which will be a blow to the economy on the rural parts of the country where such airports are located.  Some estimates put the number of jobs that will be lost at around 3000.

But with less flights taking off, surely the revenue from other taxes will go down as well?  Will the new tax have any effect, other than to reduce the choice of German travellers and push up prices?

I was on my way back from the Oberursel Christmas Market a few weeks ago, when I encountered a problem at the U-Bahn station.

Having given most of my small change to the street vendors at the market, I tried to pay for my ticket home with a 5 Euro note.

Except that the ticket machine on the side of the tracks going in my direction did not accept notes!  This is a ridiculous situation, considering that the station was re-built within the past year.

With only a few minutes to go until the train arrived, I dashed back across the crossing to the other side to buy my ticket.  Only for the ticket machine to swallow my 5 Euro note. (more…)