New aircraft tax

[flighty 31]

The Autumn budget brings a tax on flights instead of passengers from Nov 2009.

'Air passenger duty will be replaced from Nov 2009 with a scheme that charges flights instead of individuals. The Chancellor's measure is designed to increase pressure on airlines to reduce the number of empty seats and thus inprove the ratio between emissions and passengers.

WWF-UK said 'it was good news for the enviroment - it gives airlines an incentive to fill planes'

 

Any ideas how this this will manifest itself please -

Maybe we'll see last minute bargains appear again? - all the online providers seem to be in cahoots at present; no late deals -

Or will the airlines just cut / merge / ration some borderline services ?

And with oil hitting $90 today (quadrupled since 2002) there's some incentive to fill planes...

[CheshireTom 1,377]

The Autumn budget brings a tax on flights instead of passengers from Nov 2009.

'Air passenger duty will be replaced from Nov 2009 with a scheme that charges flights instead of individuals. The Chancellor's measure is designed to increase pressure on airlines to reduce the number of empty seats and thus inprove the ratio between emissions and passengers.

WWF-UK said 'it was good news for the enviroment - it gives airlines an incentive to fill planes'

 

Any ideas how this this will manifest itself please -

Maybe we'll see last minute bargains appear again? - all the online providers seem to be in cahoots at present; no late deals -

Or will the airlines just cut / merge / ration some borderline services ?

And with oil hitting $90 today (quadrupled since 2002) there's some incentive to fill planes...

 

flighty,

 

At the moment these are only proposals but effectively they are saying that the tax will be the responsibility of the airline and not the passenger. The tax is to be calculated per aircraft according to the distance flown i.e. it will be more if you are flying to LOS non-stop from London than it would be to, say, Tenerife.

 

Good points and bad points .........

 

The tax is now the responsibility of the airline. Therefore the basic ticket price will increase but the taxes element will decrease.

 

Not good news if you are flying non-stop to LOS from London since the tax will be applied according to the distance being flown. However, Qantas, BA and Thai will benefit since they will all be operating the A380 from LHR and the tax will be able to be spread over many more passengers than EVA for example.

 

It really won't make much differnce to ticket prices. The airlines will charge whatever the market will bear.

[Regyai 417]

The airlines will charge whatever the market will bear.

 

 

And UK gov will tax as much as all the good sheep believing in carbon footprints (and all that b@ll@@ks) will pay

[trotski 8]

Non of you seriously believe that this money grabing bunch of robbers calling itself a government will take less cash fromm passengers after the change than they do now do you????

 

One way round it will be to Easyjet or whatever to Amsterdam or Paris and pick up long haul from there though. I suspect that it would have to be completely seperate tickets though so no checking baggage etc all the way through.

 

Its not the thought of paying a tax that annoys me it is the way the tossers in the UK government piss away the hard earned cash we give them on politically correct bollocks all the time!!!

 

Trotski

[CheshireTom 1,377]

Non of you seriously believe that this money grabing bunch of robbers calling itself a government will take less cash fromm passengers after the change than they do now do you????

 

Err, well that's the plan. At the moment you pay taxes of either 40 or 80 quid on the flight out of UK. That is to disappear. The government will then tax the airline, not the passenger.

 

The airline passenger actually does quite well as far as taxes are concerned. There is no duty on aviation fuel, nor is there VAT applied to the cost of flight tickets.

 

I wouldn't moan too loudly ...........

 

 

One way round it will be to Easyjet or whatever to Amsterdam or Paris and pick up long haul from there though. I suspect that it would have to be completely seperate tickets though so no checking baggage etc all the way through.

 

Except that you will then have to pay Dutch or French passenger tax. It's not something that's exclusive to Brits.

[Big_Brian 179]

I'm not in the industry, so I don't know if this could happen but, with the tax being per plane, if an airline has a half full plane, and another a few hours later, it would seem to be a good idea FOR THE AIRLINE to cancel the first flight and put all the passengers onto the second.

 

If so then, for a passenger, it's a bad thing.

 

 

I've never actually understood this "put the price up and people won't fly" idea. To travel across continents in any reasonable span of time there's no other option. Fair enough, if prices for economy rose to even business class rates I would have to think about the whole trip, but less than that I just have to pay.

[CheshireTom 1,377]

I'm not in the industry, so I don't know if this could happen but, with the tax being per plane, if an airline has a half full plane, and another a few hours later, it would seem to be a good idea FOR THE AIRLINE to cancel the first flight and put all the passengers onto the second.

 

If so then, for a passenger, it's a bad thing.

I've never actually understood this "put the price up and people won't fly" idea. To travel across continents in any reasonable span of time there's no other option. Fair enough, if prices for economy rose to even business class rates I would have to think about the whole trip, but less than that I just have to pay.

 

Brian,

 

The airline would still have to fly the aircraft to the next point on its itinerary to pick up its next load. So they would still have to pay the full tax on the empty flight. The EU rules on passenger compensation for delays/cancellations are now quite onerous for the airline and are designed to prevent such instances occuring.

 

I used to pay around 400 quid to fly to LOS from LHR or Amsterdam in the mid-late 80s. Given the improvement in the aircraft, flight schedules, facilities, entertainment, food etc the actual airfares now really are a bit of a bargain and, notwithstanding the cost of fuel, they are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

 

Things will continue to improve as far as standards and choice of services are concerned. For the guys going out non-stop from LHR, Qantas, Thai and BA will all be introducing new A380s on the route over the next few years and EVA is introducng their improved 747s shortly. Oasis is already doing low-cost fares to Hong Kong (Hong Kong Express and, shortly Thai Air Asia will give a low-cost option to connect to BKK). AirAsiaX is due to start flying from Stansted to Kuala Lumpur next year. For the guys up north both Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong are rumored to be reintroducing non-stop services early next year and the increase in pax numbers on Emirates, Qatar and Etihad should see increases to their frequencies over the next couple of years.

 

Tom

Edited October 22, 2007 by CheshireTom

[RedRackam 0]

Its not the thought of paying a tax that annoys me it is the way the tossers in the UK government piss away the hard earned cash we give them on politically correct bollocks all the time!!!

 

100% agree.

 

That is why JP Getty hated to pay taxes because as he said it 'governments only waste it'.

 

He also said (I think back in the mid 70s) that 'do you think if I or my companies paid the UK government an extra $2billion in taxes it would really make a difference'?

 

Which is why it's so pathetic when MPs say smething like 'if we raise taxes on X by x% that will give us the equivalent of 2 new hostopitals and 4 new schools'. True, if that's where the money will actually flow but it never seems to flow that way does it?

Edited October 22, 2007 by RedRackam