Saving the Planet or Saving Political Face?

Did you know at the moment if you travel long haul £40 of your airfare (£80 if premium economy, business or first) is a tax called APD - Air Passenger Duty?  The government have just announced plans to increase this tax, which means by 2010 the “economy” band will go up to £85 and other cabins will rise to £170….

You can rest assured that your money will be well spent though, as the stated reason behind this tax hike is environmental.  It’s a “green” tax which will be spent on green issues to help reduce global warming according to HMG.    Well I have heard some bull in my time, but this one really takes the biscuit!  This is of course a complete red herring and is just an excuse to tax us even more.  Revenue raised will not go into green issues but simply drop into the big pot of cash needed by the government.

Why so cynical?  Well, if the government really were so concerned about the question of airline pollution, why have they allowed an extra runway to be built at Heathrow?  If you really want to slow down aviation emissions then reduce the amount of flights you allow - or at least stop the growth?

And that chimes too with some ideas proposed by the Travel industry that evidently fell on deaf ears in Whitehall.   Despite lots of lobbying from the Travel business (who let’s face it understand travel more than the government – after all that’s our job!)  the government chose to completely go against the concerted, considered, views of the experts.

So what was that proposal?  Well let’s give some facts! The average “load” (how full the aircraft is) is 65-70%.  That means that nearly 1/3 of all seats are empty on every aircraft in the sky.  The proposal was therefore to really address green issues by taxing seats that were unfilled.  In other words, tax inefficiency and encourage airlines to look more carefully at routes flown and frequency of flights.  That tax mechanism would encourage airlines to fly aircraft only when full and could cut down emissions by up to 30% by flying fewer, but better utilised, planes.

Surely that is really the way to be greener while not preventing the desire of mankind to explore our planet?  Well I think yes!  But that old cynical side of me again imagines that, although this approach would have more of the desired practical effect, ummmm - do you suppose it may raise less in taxes?

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