A random Weblog

The original $3 departure tax, now $5...

A while back I wrote about the evil pit known as he Wagga Airport Terminal in Australia, but there is another place worthy of special mention – that being Palmerston North Airport in New Zealand.

While Palmerston’s “new” terminal is vastly superior to the previous “box with drafts” that was once considered good enough for fare paying passengers, the current terminal’s claim to notoriety is that they charge a $5 departure tax. Frankly the notion of paying a departure tax to use said facility is beyond comprehension. OK so it was originally $3 and implemented to pay the interest on the new facility, but then it was retained and boosted to $5 to pay for “various upgrades” – which the Palmerston North Airport Website (as of March 2008) helpfully points out as being for things like “road widening – scheduled to start in 2003”

The attendant selling the departure stickers was doing a brisk trade, and he told me that no one really complains about paying to leave. Understandable, as possibly the most entertaining things to do in Palmerston North is hold your breath until you keel over. This forsaken place endures some particularly crap weather and a CBD where every day is like Sunday. Palmerston North’s fastest growth industry appears to be sign writing such is the barrage of cheap and cheesy retail messages that qualify for city art in the absence of anything culturally interesting.

But back to the Departure Tax; the airports web site refers to the tax as a “Levy” as I guess it sounds kinder, but a quick check confirms the word levy means tax or fine, and I think fine would be a better term – a fine for being foolish enough to pass through the facility sounds about right.

Perhaps most bizarre, as you head through to the gap in the fence Departure Gate, your boarding pass is scanned as normal, then two paces beyond this, another person scans the Departure tax sticker. What the? Why can’t the person who scanned the boarding pass also check the levy sticker? Is my Departure Tax just paying the second person wages? (A person I might add, who looked so miserable that he would be best relived of this incredibly tedious and ultimately futile job).