THE TERMINOLOGY OF these items may be discussed ad nauseum – departure tax, departure charge or even departure stamps! The effect of leaving New Zealand means that most airline passengers have to pay money to leave. Perhaps similar departure tax stamps are required by passengers leaving New Zealand by sea?

Fig 1 Palmerston North airport $3.00 departure tax stamp on airline ticket folder from 1990.

Recently this writer and his family had a family holiday in Queensland to help overcome the stresses of 9 months or so of injury and subsequent recuperation. Strangely enough it was cheaper for us to fly to Christchurch from Palmerston North and then to Coolangatta than it was to fly directly from Palmerston North to Brisbane on Freedom Air. Oddly, Freedom Air – an offshoot of Air New Zealand – no longer flies across the Tasman Sea from Palmerston North.

The two legged travelling meant that we all had to pay the domestic $5 Palmerston North airport departure tax (children under 5 years of age are exempt) on our flight south but only the adults needed to pay the $25 Christchurch International Airport departure tax as children under 12 are exempt! When we flew north from Christchurch we did not need to pay any domestic departure taxes. Had we flown to Brisbane from Palmerston North we would have had to pay their $25.00 departure fee. The international departure fees were payable at a desk adjacent to the passenger check in counters.

Fig 2 & 3 Palmerston North airport domestic boarding pass and $5.00 departure tax stamp from 2008.


Fig 4 & 5 Christchurch International Airport adult $25.00 departure tax stamp and a child’s exempt stamp on 2008 boarding passes.

Initially the Christchurch International Airport departure tax was set at $2.00 per adult passenger in the late 1970s and variations of those early green and white departure tax stamps may still be seen on various airlineltravel agent ticket folders today, often with their Australian equivalents affixed for return Trans Tasman flights.

The Palmerston North airport departure tax was initially $3 .00 per adult passenger, and this was indicated by a rather drab looking green and white stamp that was applied to one’s boarding pass. One could purchase these from a vending machine adjacent to the passenger check in counter as well as from the airport bookshop adjacent to one set of entrance doors. Today a much more attractive stamp is issued – featuring the airport’s facade as well as a bar code. To prevent re use (shock, horror!) the airport’s security staff has copied a method of cancelling uncancelled stamps from various postal administrations -the infamous biro treatment!

Depicted nearby is an adult’s black on orange-yellow, numbered $25 self adhesive departure tax stamp on a boarding pass as well as a child’s orange-yellow on white, numbered (in black) exempt self adhesive departure tax stamp. One interesting aspect from the numbers observed is that it appears that for every child passenger departing from Christchurch there are about 12 adults.

The good news was that no such tax stamps were needed to leave Australia – the departure fees were already included in our ticket prices. This shows that: different airports and different airport administration regulations can still produce collectable items of a quasi philatelic nature! Departure tax stamps issued by Auckland and various other New Zealand international airports do have their following within the aerophilately collecting community.