Outta Here! : $16 Departure Tax Adds Jolt for Visitors on Tight Budget

After a summer of sightseeing, visitor Erich Moritz had a few final words for Los Angeles: “Lemme outta here!”

The 19-year-old German tourist had spent his vacation traveling by bicycle from Alaska to Acapulco. He had swatted mosquitoes in Canada, sweated in Mexico and slept next to roadsides on all but two nights during his three-month odyssey.

His camera had been swiped in Anchorage on the first day of his trip. His tent had been stolen in San Francisco, halfway through the trek. Now he was wondering whether his pocket was about to be picked on his last day in Los Angeles.

Moritz had the departure tax on his mind.

The tax is a $16 fee that is collected from Los Angeles International Airport passengers headed abroad. Six dollars goes to the federal Department of Transportation; the rest is split by the federal Customs and Immigration and Naturalization services--although all three agencies waive the fee to passengers flying to areas of Mexico, Canada and some Caribbean islands.

Most travelers pay the tax without knowing it after it is automatically added to the price of their airline ticket at the time of purchase.

But hundreds of others are jolted each day to discover that their travel agent failed to include the tax in the air fare and they must fork over $16 before they can board their plane for home.

That spells trouble for tourists who have spent their last $30 on a taxi ride to LAX or used up the last of their American currency at an airport souvenir shop.

Youthful visitors traveling on a shoestring--those who have sought out cut-rate air fares to begin with and carefully budgeted their trips--are the most common victims. People like Erich Moritz.

“Sixteen dollars is a lot,” said the student from Munich as he waited in the Alitalia Airlines check-in line. He was eager to claim a window seat and learn whether his $500 round-trip ticket included the tax. “I have just a few dollars left. They should warn people about this.”

Across LAX’s Tom Bradley International Terminal, visitors Linda Hollis, 21, and Mark Smith, 22, of Liverpool, England, mulled over the tax in front of the American Trans Air charter flight check-in counter.

“We spent all we had on day trips and so forth,” Hollis said. Added Smith: “I don’t have a cent left.”

At the British Airways counter, Sven Schelo, 21, and Annemarie Vogelbusch, 20, of Dusseldorf, Germany, asked an airline agent whether their tickets included the tax.

“I’ve got $5.15 left. We spent the last of our money to fill the rental car up with gasoline,” Schelo said.

Airport ticket agents cringe when they have to collect the departure fee. Although the Customs and Immigration portions have been assessed for about the past two years, the $6 portion has only been collected since January. It replaced a $3 fee that was established in 1970.

“It’s a government tax. The government should collect it, not us,” said the British Airways agent who examined Schelo’s tickets and determined that the fee had indeed been prepaid.

“It happens every flight,” shrugged Khaleel Siddiqui, a ticket agent for KLM Royal Dutch Airways.

Most carriers pay the tax for passengers who do not have the cash.

Joe Matz, an agent for Air New Zealand, said he collects the tax from reluctant travelers “all the time . . . every day.” Some passengers claim they don’t have the money, however.

“We usually scare them. We take a picture of the passport and have them sign it and tell them the government is going to come after them. They’ll say, ‘The travel agent didn’t tell me,’ or ‘I spent my last money on the cab.’ But we usually collect it--they have credit cards, and that’s what we grab.”

Some airlines send passengers without cash to the Travelers Aid Society, which donates the $16 if an investigation verifies that the passengers have no money.

“Generally, it’s a young person who’s backpacking it and is down to his last dollar,” said Susan Edelstein, who heads the LAX Travelers Aid office.

“They have their return ticket. They know they’re going to be fed on the plane and that someone is going to pick them up at the airport.”

Back at the Alitalia counter, Moritz had four one-dollar bills left in the nylon money belt beneath his T-shirt after learning at the last minute that he was required to purchase a $16 shipping box for his bicycle. Happily, the coding on his ticket showed that he had prepaid the departure tax.

With minutes to spare, Moritz boxed his bike and ran for his plane. “The window seats are taken. I’ve got one in the middle. And it’s a 16-hour flight,” he shrugged.

So long, L.A.