Airline passenger news and views

The government is ready to withdraw the plan to introduce a new environmental tax on air travel to substitute the air passenger duty (APD).

The pledge included in the coalition government manifesto consisted of changing the current APD, based on tax per passenger for another that taxes the plane, has been 'shelved' according to Channel 4 News.

The 'per plane' tax was meant to penalise airlines with older and high fuel consuming fleet, as well as those with planes that regularly fly half-empty. The APD instead charges individual passengers independently of the distance travelled or the efficiency of the plane used, and does not contemplate freight operators or private jets.

An alliance of airlines, airports and tour operators - including British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, as well as Gatwick and Heathrow airports - has teamed up to ask chancellor  George Osborne not to raise the current air passenger taxes, ahead of the settings of the new budget later this month.

Among the protesters are also Telegraph Travel and the travel association Abta, organisations which have launched a public petition for fair tax on flying to be signed on Facebook.

Also in Ireland, the Fine Gael-Labour coalition has promised to abolish tax on air travel in order to increase the number of visitors to the country, which has fell from 7.7 million in 2007 to 5.6 million last year.

The APD is a tax on all passengers leaving the UK, except those who are on transfer, aimed to restrict greenhouse gas emissions, and is expected to earn the government £2.2bn this year and £3.6bn by 2015.

The low cost airline easyJet has not joined the campaign to stop the raise in air tax. Being an airline with a younger and fuel-efficient fleet, they opt for a suppression altogether of the APD and a shift to the per-aircraft tax that the government is now said to not introduce.

EasyJet accuses on its website to other airlines of "secretly lobbying the government to get a free ride for their transfer passengers and for their longest flights." As well as pointing at cargo airlines that do not pay environmental taxes at all.

Noel