Apd tax to cut passenger numbers

Travel advice APD tax: This is important do take a minute to read, get angry and then contact your MP..

The government has admitted that its planned increases in APD or Air Passenger Duty, will lose the aviation industry 1.5 million passengers from Britain.

A Flying Matters spoksman added that it believed the government had underestimated the impact of the tax increases on long-haul flights, where a family of four would face paying £600 in tax to go on holiday.

Its admission about the impact of the rises planned for November this year and next came in a written parliamentary answer from new transport minister Paul Clark.

The association said a family of four travelling economy class to Disneyland in Florida for half term week 2011 will pay £240 in taxes; to the Caribbean for a Christmas in 2010 it will be £300 and for the family to visit relatives in Australia that Christmas it will be £340.

He said the government estimated that by 2030, the number of passengers travelling through British airports would drop by 1.5 million people as a result of APD.

The government’s answer also revealed it expected 1.4 million of those people to disappear from short-haul flights.

Aviation pressure group Flying Matters said the government’s answer showed how the tax increases would hit poorer people, whose travels were restricted to short-haul flights.

Chairman Brian Wilson said: “These figures show how millions of ordinary families will be priced out of flying by these taxes.

“There is no justification for such a regressive measure. Returning air travel to the preserve of a wealthy elite is likely to go down like a lead balloon with the electorate.”