Airport boss says air tax rise will hit flights
20.06.10
An expected increase in Air Passenger Duty (APD) - the tax on air fares - expected in this week's Emergency Budget will see airlines increase prices or cut flights, according to the outgoing boss of Edinburgh Airport. The Scotland on Sunday reports that Gordon Dewar, who is relocating to Bahrain next month, has warned air tax rises would particularly affect Scotland.
He said: ‘We are so peripheral. If you are coming here from Europe you have to fly, and if we are suddenly doubling the tax it will make Scotland a deeply unattractive place to get to. easyJet and Ryanair make pretty hard-nosed commercial decisions about where they send aircraft. They are driven by profitability and talk about price differentials in the £3 to £5 range. If suddenly you add another £30 they will not put new aircraft into Scotland and are quite likely to pull the existing ones.’
APD is currently charged on a per-head basis, but the Conservatives have proposed levying a tax on planes rather than passengers. This is likely to hit full service airlines harder than budget airlines, who typically fill their planes. A spokesman for easyJet told the newspaper it was ‘too early to say’ what impact government tax changes would be on its operations,
A spokesman for Ryanair said the tourist tax was ‘regressive’ and ‘continues to devastate’ inbound tourism to the UK. He said Ryanair would carry 2 million passengers through Edinburgh this year, ‘but we could increase this number overnight if the tourist tax was scrapped.'
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