Airline passenger news and views

I do hate the Government's lack of consistency. Green issues are important but so is the economy. Just inventing new reasons to tax is not sound government.

Taxes like this start off as a good idea, a bit like tax on cigarettes where NHS costs need to be offset. This tax might have been to offset environmental damage but that concept has been lost in the drive to find any and every source of tax income.

But what do we, the public, do about this. It is just revenue generation for Brown and co to spend on things that most of us do not want money spent on. In its most absurd form, we could have air travel taxed in the name of ecology only for the money raised to be used in war. In my own (very personal) experience, war and care for the ecolology just do not mix.

I think the tax is still way too low. Who are all these people that think it is right to fly off round the world. Everyone has telephones, so why do they not use them. As for the holiday makers - there should be a rationing, everyone should get the same and those that want more should have to buy the carbon credits.

Any tax like this that they tried to put in place here in the USA would just get torn up. We need air travel to get around. My nearest town of any note is just under 120 miles.

About four years ago, my wife and I and our two kids paid a total tax of £80 for the family. Now, if we go long-haul, we will pay £300.

I understand the green issue but this is like the speed camera argument. It starts off green and then becomes another tax revenue stream.

Why is it only Britain that is doing this tax. What is the point of the EU if other countries can get away without taxing travel? Have you seen the waste fuel and energy every time a plane takes off from Heathrow - not to mention the noise pollution.

If green is so important, how can we justify the military flights back and forth. I am not saying that Afghanistan is not also important but there has to be a balance. Did anyone consider the green question before we decided to join these wars.

Our daughter has moved with her husband’s job to Hong Kong. She has a new grand daughter that we have not seen. We are pensioners, we have been careful with our money but this tax just makes it that bit more expensive.

Why is it when this government want to generate more taxes they use the GREEN issue. This is just one big smoke screen. As we already know in the UK nothing we do will make any difference on carbon emmisions when the rest of the world ignore the issue. The majority of UK resudents no longer smoke as a result of governments policies could be this lost revenue has to come from somewhere else, me thinks

Another tax on a struggling industry. When are the government going to accept that carbon emmissions from the UK have such a small impact on global warming. Stop hurting our pockets.

A pointless tax, other EU countries and the US are not following suit. Put the pressure on oil companies and put massive funding/research in finding alternative energy sources.

Why do we seem to have taxes here that other countries do not have and yet we say that we have to have them because they are part of the EU rules. This whole thing is out of control.

APD is a tax on leisure. Successive governments have taxed our income, they have also taxed the limited amount of finance we obtain from our savings and now this Labour Government is heavily taxing our leisure. Whilst this is an enoromous tax on all travellers it will particularly affect young hard working families wishing to take their two week holiday in the sun and people especially pensioners on fixed limited incomes.

I am fed up that every one thinks that it is their god given right to be able to fly where ever and when ever they want.

Start living in tomorrows world today, holiday at home, spend your money in Britian and get to no your own country. Tom Hodgkinson would aprove of everybody staying closer to home and enjoying their home countryside. Travel by car, travel by ferry, travel train and feel like you have been traveling instead of being blasted off in a aluminium tube with no view and no feeling of having made a journey.

Hear, hear Douglas Chirnside.

Since when has it been the inalienable right for the population to take overseas holidays by air at the drop of a hat ?

Do people not understand we are in the midst of a recession still, with an unprecedented public debt to repay ? I would have thought taxing unnecessary and unwarranted air travel is a more than a fair way to help pay for services to the elderly such as heating and hot meals - or do you really think your multiple jaunts to Australasia or the Carribean are more important ?

I like the views of the IATA on Air Passenger Duty, they have recently stated at the annual WTTC Global Travel & Tourism Summit in Beijing that governments around the world should no longer use aviation as a "cash cow".

And it all started as a sort of genuine green tax, just a little would be a big help for the good of the world. Not a problem, you will feel alright about this little payment.

Now it is a nasty tax just like any other tax. Next we will have it on an escalator as is fuel tax. Control freeks do not like people travelling so this will be an easy way to put a stop to that. Mind you, other countries have had this tax a lot longer than we have.

A "cap-and-trade" global emissions scheme is the way forward for aviation. APD in the UK should be retained for the time being, with all four bands being amended, and phased out by 2020. The Coalition government should reverse the 2010/11 rise in APD at the earliest opportunity.