Originally Posted by
seawolf
Clear as mud.
From a foreigner's perspective, all I know is I brought a ICE ticket on bahn.de from "Frankfurt(M) Flughafen Fernbf" to "Düsseldorf Flughafen." One would have expected that would coverage transportation to the terminal. Who knew you had to buy an additional ticket for Skytrain or
walk the 2.8 km between the train station and the terminal.
I agree with you entirely. I arrived a few years ago with an Inter-Rail ticket expecting to get the "free" shuttle to the airport. Only on the return journey did I realise I should have paid for the ride. It is (or was at the time) not at all clear.
The fault must lie to a large extent with DB (and I'm a big DB fan) - surely they should indicate on their website that an additional charge may be payable to get to the airport from the "Airport" station? Presumably they don't, for fear - as someone said upthread - of losing further custom at an under-utilised station.
Comparisons with the US are a red herring - this is Germany, for heaven's sake, with one of the best integrated public transport systems in the world. Surely it is not beyond the wit of DB to do a deal with the VRR?