As Deutsche Welle reports, the relevant permission from the cartel office has already been obtained. The fee set by Lufthansa for domestic German and intra-European flights will be 30 euros, and 45 euros for longer flights. The duty is charged both when purchasing a ticket directly at the airport and when ordering online or at a travel agency.
As an official Lufthansa spokesman said, the duties, which will be introduced on September 1, will ensure "transparency" between the service provided by the airline and the consulting services of travel agencies. The carrier's new business strategy is no exception – the German company is merely following the path of many European countries and the United States.
According to Welt am Sonntag, the airlines intending to levy such duties include Italy's Alitalia, Britain's British Airways, Spain's Iberia, Switzerland's Swiss, and the American Delta and United Airlines. For Lufthansa alone, this measure will save about 100 million euros a year.
In the future, some airlines intend to charge another additional fee from a passenger – if they wish to purchase a paper-printed ticket instead of an electronic one. For Lufthansa, Air France and Japan's ANA, this surcharge will be eight euros, for Finland's Finnair – ten euros, for Switzerland's Swiss – 15 euros. In this way, air passengers are being encouraged to order plane tickets online more often in the future.
For travel agencies, the measures taken by airlines are like death. According to forecasts by the Federal Association of Travel Agencies (DRV), 4,500 travel agencies selling air tickets will close overnight in Germany alone. That is, they will repeat the fate of many US travel agencies that were destroyed as a result of similar airline policies three years ago.