This article recently appeared in the aviation press. It gives us an opportunity to open the debate about the Air Passenger Duty applied to all passengers leaving any UK airport, and relook at the whole problem. From 1 January 2021, The Netherlands will levy €7.45 tax per passenger ticket," (Aviation24.be 14-11-20)
The Dutch have opviously found that the UK ´s tax can be a very useful tool to raise money even though the premise on which the tax is based is wrong.The most eloquent remarks came from the French who are trying to introduce a similar tax to APD, to be decided next year. "France and its new environmental eco tax on aviation", (Business Traveller, 19-11-20)
Even Greenpeace is jumping on the band wagon to further its agenda. "Greenpeace asks the European Commission to ban short-haul flights", (aviation24.be 25-11-20)
https://www.aviation24.be/miscellaneous/greenpeace/greenpeace-asks-the-european-commission-to-ban-short-haul-flights/
How can we look at this problem? To begin at the beginning..........
What is Air Passenger Duty(APD) for?
Initially the tax was introduced to make the airline industry assume part of the cost it causes by its activity, apart from airport usage and air traffic control (air usage) which it pays religiously. As the airline industry did not pay anything towards the cost outside normal usage then this was considered a reasonable application. Add to that the UK government´s international agreements to reduce CO2 emissions then the application of a tax to achieve a reduction was considered acceptable.
How is APD applied?
The UK government lays out its conditions for the tax in this link.Here are explained the rates that are applied and to which destinations.Basically the planet is divided into short-haul and long-haul flying with a tariff applied according to the distance travelled.
GOV.UK Guidance: Rates for Air Passenger Duty
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rates-and-allowances-for-air-passenger-duty
What is wrong?
However, is the the APD being applied correctly?After all the kerosene consumption, the fumes produced by flying, and the noise heard on take off/landing or when flying low overhead, these are not caused by the passengers but the aircraft. If I were Superman and able to fly, I would not consume any fuel, produce any toxic fumes nor produce much noise. However, we are not Superman nor will we ever be able to fly independently outside of a machine.
The APD is being applied to the people, the passengers who have no control over the apparatus in which they fly. they are mostly manufactured by Boeing and the Airbus Consortium, plus a few minor manufacturers. Therefore, the passenger has no choice but to accept the limited offer of aircraft for flights. I view a tax based on this as inordinately unfair and wrong.
In fact the APD comes down to being nothing better than a poll tax on people who fly from or within the UK. The Poll tax that Mrs.(later Lady) Thatcher as Prime Minister tried to impose resulted in her downfall. It was shown to be wrong and the solution
found by Michael Heseltine has proved to be simple in application, fair,
effective, and long lasting. Moreover, if we look at the present situation in autumn 2020 we have a dreaded covid19 virus which has decimated the world´s economy, and the airline industry in particular. In this particular case the millions of passengers who flew long and short-haul routes have been reduced drastically. What was a lucrative source of income for the Treasury has been reduced to an unimaginable all time low. Thus, it is time to question the wisdom of following the present fiscal policy, look at the roots of the questions and find acceptable answers.
A long list of airlines from large to small has demanded the abolishment of APD. Loganair is the latest to join the list asking for APD to be withdrawn.
"Loganair calls for APD pause as it announces S21 plans", (UK Aviation News, 9-9-20)
https://ukaviation.news/loganair-calls-for-apd-pause-as-it-announces-s21-plans/
Solutions:
1- Abolish APD completely.
2- The airlines pay no VAT or excise duty on fuel. This is unfair. The airlines should apply the same VAT on the kerosene it burns as do other forms of public transport - such as taxis, buses and coaches.This would apply to all aircraft filling their tanks in the UK. This can go a long way to substituting the income lost by the abolishment of APD.
3- APD should be replaced by a levy on aircraft, to be called Aircraft Pollution Tax (APT) (for simplicity`s sake).
There are two types of pollution - noise and fumes. The amount of noise is created by the type of engine used. Jet engines tend to make much more noise than propeller driven engines.Plus the larger the engine the greater the noise. It is also true that the age of an engine has a big role to play. Engines produced in the 1970s and 80s make far more noise than those manufactured these days to produce the same amount of horsepower. Thus engines should be divided into different categories between those that can or not achieve limits on the decibels produced. This does not have to be complicated but can be a division into two categories.
Noise is also produced by the aircraft themselves. The more modern models tend to be more streamlined with less drag and thus more efficient producing less noise. The same criteria can be applied to airframes as are applied to engines.
The other type of pollution concerns consumption of fuel. The latest engines are always promoted by the manufacturers as achieving a certain percentage improvement in consumption - (e.g.)they burn 10 or 20% less kerosene than previous generations of engines thus obtaining a decrease in operating costs. They thus lead to higher profits and/or lower fares.
An illustration of this is the product description on the extended range single aisle Airbus being bought by Iberia, Aer Lingus and other airlines." Airbus says that the next step up from the A321LR will have a range of 4,700 nautical miles, 15% more than the A321LR. The A321XLR will also have a 30% lower fuel burn per seat than its competitor’s previous-generation aircraft,"...
With the abolition of the Poll Tax Michael Heseltine was given the task of coming up with a clear system simple in its application to replace it. This he did and it has lasted since then - for over 30 years now. Such an action is needed now to replace APD. This would result in a tax being fairer and easier to apply as you only have to apply it to each take off from UK airports and thus collect from each company regardless of the number of passengers being carried.
4- Laws to permit or prohibit something are all very well, but they are somewhat useless without an inspection system which is accurate and fair.
a)- Therefore, we have to ensure that there is an extensive range of monitors on and around the airfield. These should also be outside the airfield`s limits on the approaches to the runways so that measurements can be taken for take-offs and landings.
b)- Monitors round the perimeter of the airfield are also essential. These would establish the parameters in which to work including any outside influences which could corrupt the data. To give one example: monotoring devices along the northern perimeter of Heathrow airfield can give us a base point for pollutionary effects on a windless day. On a day when the breeze or wind is in a northerly direction that data will tell us the effect that traffic pollution has coming down from the M25 motorway just to the north of the airfield. As a result more detailed data can be compared to real data to reduce the unwanted external effect.
c)- What cannot be ignored is the airside non-aircraft pollution.In any airport there are vehicles moving about, pushing and pulling airplanes, taking luggage and supplies to and from the airplanes, moving cargo and luggage to and from one airplane or warehouse to another, transport vehicles moving crew and passengers to and from aircraft, and other ancilliary vehicles on airport business.
d)- not to be ignored are the vehicles that operate to and from the terminals from outside the terminals but inside the airfield (i.e. landside). These can be trucks for cargo, buses and coaches for passengers, taxis and cars for passenger and worker use and others. These vehicles at some stage in the future (non-specified) as yet will be prohibited entry to airports,- or at best their entry will be strictly limited. I refer, of course, to those powered by petroleum products. The permitted vehicles will be those powered by electricity or someother non-polluting energy source.
Therefore, solutions exist to the problems of pollution and discrimination. Such measures to promote the use of renewable sources of energy while penalising the present overuse of toxic producing forms of energy, are available but need to be improved. Incentives to use better forms of air transport together with penalties to airlines for not putting these measures into use can be applied effectively. All this together with the application in a forced but resasonable time period means that the aims of achieving a greatly reduced production of toxic polluting fuels can be achieved by 2050.Obviously any measures have to applied gradually in a progmatic way. Those airports that have a higher volume of traffic (passengers and/or cargo) would have to come first then on a scale downwards to the lesser used airports.
All of these pointers refer to the institutions who promote their use and the machines used. NONE refer to the customer using these machines. The measures should discriminate between the good and the bad machines. It is not the customer`s fault which is which. Penalise the use of the bad and incentivise the use of the good, then the customer will choose by price or conviction the good to use.
Such is the case to abolish the Air Passenger Duty.
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