ERA welcomes UK Government’s APD decision
22-Jun-2010 European Regions Airline Association (ERA) today welcomed the UK government's announcement postponing any decision to change Britain's air passenger duty, which taxes each passenger once per journey, to an aircraft based tax, which risks penalising the many millions of British passengers who need to make a connection between flights.
The previous UK government's preferred option was for an aircraft tax which would be applied for each departure from a UK airport. This would have led to three taxes for a passenger making a return trip Aberdeen-London-Dallas, and an amazing 6 taxes for a passenger making a return trip from Southampton to Wick, travelling on the same aircraft but with two intermediate stops each way.
As European Union rules require the same tax to be applied for any flight within the European Union, including domestic journeys within the UK, this would have led to the Southampton-Wick passenger paying 6 times the tax paid by a passenger travelling from London to Cyprus and back, who would pay only one tax on departure from London.
Andy Clarke, ERA's Adviser Air Transport Policy said: "The clear winners of a per plane tax using this model would be airlines that do not offer their passengers connections within the UK. The losers would be the millions of passengers who need to travel from UK regions which do not have non-stop flights to their chosen destinations. The economic effect on those regions would be significant as some inbound customers would undoubtedly choose cheaper flights to different destinations. I welcome the government's announcement of a public consultation before pressing ahead with this initiative which could so easily become another government disaster."