Lufthansa gives customers what they want: another surcharge

The carbon emissions debate is gathering ground in Europe with Lufthansa pledging to introduce a voluntary emissions surcharge on tickets to fight global warming.

But the subtleties of when and how the surcharge is to be implemented are yet to be decided. And a quick call to the Lufthansa press office did little to enlighten us. Reading between the lines, it almost seems as if Lufthansa chief executive Wolfgang Mayrhuber mentioned it in passing to German magazine Der Spiegel and journalists from around the world have been picking up on it ever since.

The surcharge, which Lufthansa stressed was "voluntary", will be introduced over the course of this year, but as yet there is "no fixed date" for its implementation. Lufthansa's press office believed it would be in the form of a link to an organisation which specialises in offsetting carbon emissions.

Lufthansa says the surcharge is a result of passengers asking what they can do to reduce their carbon emissions, but "is is only one thing in Lufthansa's whole programme. Our biggest interest is in what we can do to reduce emissions, like investing in more modern fuel-efficient aircraft."