News: Airlines unhappy over Tory flights tax proposals

Flights > News > # 1211 (12/03/2007)

Airlines have hit out at Conservative plans for new environmental taxes on flights to combat climate change.
The proposals include levying VAT or fuel duty on domestic flights and a 'Green Air Miles Allowance', where people would be able to take one short-haul flight at the standard rate of aviation tax, but frequent flyers would pay a higher rate.
Another measure being considered in the Greener Skies consultation paper is scrapping air passenger duty and replacing it with a new "per flight" tax based on carbon emissions.
Shadow chancellor George Osborne said tough long-term decisions need to made to tackle climate change, and that as a result taxes on aviation should be increased. But he said the taxes needed to be designed so that they did not "hit people who only have one package holiday a year" and that they target "more dirty engines on aeroplanes".
"That way we have the maximum environmental effect and we also don't tax people out of their one foreign holiday a year," he said.
Virgin Atlantic said "green" taxes would not work and urged the Conservatives to invest instead in developing lighter and cleaner planes and fossil-free fuels.
Virgin Atlantic spokesman, Paul Charles, said the proposals would damage the UK economy because they would make UK airlines less competitive and shift jobs to other countries in Europe. British Airways said taxation was an “extremely blunt instrument” in terms of reducing carbon emissions. Easyjet dismissed air passenger duty as “probably the worst tax ever invented" but it gave a cautious welcome to the idea of a "per flight" tax, saying it would help to sideline airlines using "dirty" aircraft. Environmentalists have welcomed the proposals. Dave Timms of Friends of the Earth said: "Aviation is the fastest growing area of the UK's carbon emissions, and if we don't do something about it we have no chance of meeting international targets, or any targets that the government might set."