Finally there is some good news to report to the airline industry. This time the good news comes from the UK budget that was just announced by Chancellor George Osborne. Apparently he announced that there will be no rise in Air Passenger Duty (APD) this year. In fact, the rise in the tax has been pushed back to 2012.

Of course, it is not all great news for the airline industry. Osborne did note that the government would be trying to make back some of the money that would have been made off the increase to APD. It will do this by imposing a tax on all private jet passengers. Private jet passengers are a group of people who used to actually be completely exempt from this tax.

Mr Osborne also said that the tax does have its flaws, and the government is going to work to iron these out. This is something that has to be fixed as soon as possible. One of the best examples of a problem in APD is the fact that a flight to the Caribbean has a higher tax on it than a flight to California. This is odd since California is actually further away.

Mike Carrivick, who is the chief executive of the Board of Airline Representatives, said that this announcement regarding APD is a very welcoming sight. Of course, he did go on that this announcement did not go far enough. Right now the UK still pays the highest aviation tax in all of Europe.

Carolyn McCall, who is the chief executive at easyJet, said that the decision to tax passengers on private jets was a step in the right direction. On top of this, most airlines are happy to see the fact that APD has been postponed.

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Filed under Travel News

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 24th, 2011 at 9:16 am and is filed under Travel News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.