Category Archives: Environmental Issues

Cheap flights to Morocco – how to avoid Gordon Brown’s rip-off air passenger duty

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Continued from Flightmapping’s cheap flights to Morocco page

Are you fed up with searching for cheap flights to Morocco, only to find that those one pound flight deals end up costing way more than you bargained for by the time you add all the extra taxes and charges? 

The extortionate extra charges passengers have to pay on flights to Morocco are entirely down to Gordon Brown’s £40 air passenger duty stealth tax, a fee that is supposed to go some way towards compensate for the environmental damage caused by passenger aircraft. This is fine in principal, but it makes no sense in practice when Morocco flights are classified in the same tax bracket as flights to Australia. Morocco is roughly 1500 miles from the UK, whereas Australia is over 10,000 miles away – the maths simply doesn’t add up.  

Is there a way round this?

Budget minded travellers who want to see a little bit more of Morocco, and who have the luxury of time on their hands, might want to look for cheap flights to Gibraltar, or any airport in southern Spain, such as Malaga, instead, and then travel to Morocco by sea. By doing this you will only have to pay £10 air passenger duty. 

Gibraltar

  • Because of the amount of walking, you might do between airports, buses and railway stations, we would recommend doing this type of journey with hand luggage only. This will also help you save on airline baggage fees.
  • If you fly into Gibraltar, you can walk from the airport to the Spanish border town of La Linea in around 15 minutes. Local buses from La Linea to the ferry port of Algeciras (approximately €2; 45 minutes; every 30 minutes).

Southern Spain

Cheap flights to Malaga are available from just about every UK international airport, but flights to Seville will take you closer to Algeciras.

Suggestion:  If you are interested in Arabic architecture, why not combine a trip to Morocco with a trip to Andalusia? You might also want to consider flights to Granada, to visit the famous Alhambra, or to Seville, to visit its famous citadel. Although it is easiest to explore the region in a rental car, budget travellers can easily get between cities in Andalusia by coach or train. The high-speed AVE train service provides a rapid link between Seville and Malaga, with a brief change in Cordoba. This would allow you time to visit Cordoba’s famous mosque. Unfortunately, the AVE doesn’t yet stop in Granada, so you will need to get there by coach. For information about buses in Andalusia, see Andalusia.com.

To travel between Málaga and Algeciras, you will need to allow around one hour 45 minutes [http://www.ctsa-portillo.com/ima/pdf/malaga-estacion.pdf], plus another half an hour to transfer between Malaga airport and Malaga bus station. Depending on the flight timings from your local airport, you should certainly be able to make it to Algeciras in the same day, and there is a good chance that you will be able to reach the Moroccan port of Tangier. The bus between Málaga and Algeciras costs €11.68.

From Spain to Morocco by ferry

There are various different companies offering ferry travel between Algeciras in Spain and Tangier in Morocco. We tried booking ahead for travel in May, but the ferry companies we tried only had advance bookings for the next three weeks. You really shouldn’t have any problems travelling as a foot passenger on any of these ferries, especially as services are frequent. The high-speed ferries take just one hour — you will actually be timetabled to arrive in Morocco before you leave Spain, due to the time differences between the two countries. Who says that budget travellers can’t feel like they are on Concorde?  There isn’t much price difference between the high-speed ferries and the slower services, which take around 2 1/2 hours — €37 for the fast ferry, versus €33 for the slow ferry. However, we wouldn’t recommend paying extra for the speedy journey, unless you have a particular train you want to catch and Tangier. Besides, why pay more to be boxed in to an airtight container, when you can see so much more from a conventional open ferry? Note that these prices are for foot passengers — most car hire companies will not allow you to take your vehicle from Spain into Morocco.

You might already be asking where the savings are, as you have already forked out most of the difference between your Marrakech flight and your Gibraltar flight on the ferry to Tangier. We’d simply like to point out that by taking a circuitous route, you will see so much more than you would by flying direct to Marrakech.

However you decide to arrange your trip to Morocco, we just think that you will get much better value by going out through Gibraltar or Spain, and using the difference in air passenger duty to pay for your ferry journey and a few drinks on the way. If you fly into Gibraltar, you will also get to experience one of the most exciting landings anywhere in the world!

Continuing down to Casablanca and Marrakech

Allow a good half an hour to stroll through Tangier from the port to the new Tangier Ville station. Trains in Morocco are very similar to the ones you might expect in regional France, although they are a great deal cheaper!  Allow around six hours for the train to Marrakech, and ten hours to continue to Casablanca. You might prefer to take the overnight sleeper, which departs from Tangier at 9.05pm, arriving in Marrakech at 8:05am the next morning. The price for a couchette is 350 Moroccan dirhams (£29), or 190 dirhams (approximately £16) for a seat. 

Heading home

After all this effort, and seeing so many places on the way, you will may want to the simple option of a direct flight home.  The advantage of doing it this way is that the prices on flights to the UK from Morocco are usually a great deal cheaper than they are on the way out, plus you won’t have to pay any air passenger duty.

Easyjet Ecojet – Questions and Answers

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Last month, Flightmapping caught up with Easyjet CEO Andrew Harrison, who was talking about the benefits of Easyjet’s new Ecojet proposals.

A lot of commentators have suggested that India or China might be able to offer this kind of emerging technology, even though they don’t really have any manufacturers capable of doing this just yet.  Have you considered talking to the Brazilian company Embraer, who have already made major efficiency gains through aircraft like the E195 used by Flybe?

Andy Harrison: No, they are still only building smaller planes. We are looking for a replacement in the 150+ seat market, so that we can offer a replacement for our current fleet of Airbus A319s and Boeing 737-700s.

In terms of cabin noise, is there any advantage in having rear mounted engines?

AH: Yes, they should be quieter.

Do the kind of outbursts we have heard from Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary, who refers to environmental campaigners as “nutbags”, help or hinder your cause?

AH: We never take what our Irish rivals say too seriously.

How much do you think that carbon offsetting is likely to cost the consumer?

AH: We are talking about a typical £1 to £2 on an average Easyjet flight.  This compares reasonably against our current average fare of around £40. This is also a fraction of the recent increase in air passenger duty.

If you continue to encourage emissions trading, and keep talking about the aviation industry’s need to meet its environmental obligations, do you risk shooting yourself in the foot, and putting people off from flying?

AH: No, we are just keen to see an informed debate, in which the externalities of flying are properly addressed.  We expect consumers to use this information to make intelligent discretionary decisions about their flying habits.

Do you think it is reasonable for airlines like yourselves to complain about increases in air passenger duty on the one hand, and then to take handouts from regional governments with the other?

AH: I think there are two separate arguments here – one is that aviation should cover its environmental externalities, and the other is that new flight routes do bring in tremendous economic benefits to the regions they serve. I think that both of these arguments are equally valid – so it is not really a sense of giving and taking.  However, air passenger duty is currently significantly higher than the carbon cost of flights.

Will the Easyjet eco-jet proposals result in shorter flying distances?

AH: This design is aimed at flights with a sector length of up to 2000 nautical miles – 98% of all flights operated by aircraft with 120-240 seats are below this. We would expect an extended range version for the longer routes, but this would need additional fuel tanks and fewer seats.

Airlines such as Easyjet very well funded, so this kind of new technology will be affordable to them. Isn’t this all a bit irrelevant though, if your older aircraft are just passed on to other airlines?

AH: We made it very clear that we believe that there are 700 older aircraft in Europe which need to be taken out of the skies and dismantled. There is no point in shipping them out to Africa, as that just relocates the problem. What we are calling for is a win-win situation – airlines get to invest in new, cleaner aircraft with a minimum of noise and CO2 emissions, consumers get to fly much more modern equipment, and the environmental benefits are clear to see.

Doesn’t this create a huge problem, because there are already shortages of new aircraft, and now you are effectively saying to African countries that their airlines cannot expand, because these older aircraft must be phased out?

AH: We are only saying that the very oldest aircraft need to be taken out of service.

What will happen to Easyjet’s current fleet that is due for replacement from 2015 onwards?

AH: The reason why we are asking aircraft manufacturers to take the Easyjet eco-jet proposals seriously is that we are looking ahead now to our first major fleet replacement, which is due to start in 2015. We depreciate our aircraft over 23 years, so it would not be a problem for us to scrap than after this time.

Considering that Easyjet is so desperate to display its green credentials, why did you kick up so much fuss about Virgin Trains’ recent adverts, which were trying to encourage people to swap domestic flights for the train instead?

AH: At Easyjet, we’re not against trains at all, we are just looking for a balanced and sensible debate. Many proponents of rail travel seem to assume that trains are 100% full all the time, and they’re not taking real accounts of actual occupancy levels, or of the infrastructure costs of the track and maintenance. 

Easyjet has always recognised that train travel offers significant convenience on journeys of up to three hours, and that this range is extending – perhaps now to four hours. If the train journey takes less than this time, we simply don’t fly.

Further links:

Flightmapping on the Radio

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Flightmapping’s MD James Avery will be on BBC Radio CWR, in Annie Othen’s travel slot, from around 11:40pm tomorrow (Tuesday 19th June).

Topics set for discussion include:

As always, James promised to be on fighting form, so tune in for some interesting discussion.

 

 

Want to expand an airport? Think about mitigation, mitigation, mitigation.

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Whatever has gone wrong with Coventry Airport’s attempts to open up a new terminal, and offer flights for upto 2 million passengers each year, there is no point in trying to find a scapegoat. Considering that the airport’s current owners took over the lease from TUI on the apparent understanding that the second public inquiry would be a formality, this ruling must come as a tremendous blow to them.

Infact, Coventry Airport’s managing director, Chris Orphanou, has not exactly minced his words when commenting on the decision to the Coventry Evening Telegraph:

“I’m not from Coventry, but had I been from Coventry, I would probably have been creating World War Three today”

Well, I’m not sure if I’d say I’m from Coventry either – I happen to live here, but I’d consider myself to be “from” that other town just up the road – Leamington Spa, or Royal Leamington Spa to the snobs out there. So having seen this argument from both sides of the fence, I think that this is the crux of the problem.

Poor Coventry is surrounded by affluent Warwickshire, which will only deal on its own terms – just look at the history of Warwick University, for more details on this. Meanwhile, just up the road is Birmingham, which is still trying to cling to its claim of being Britain’s second city. Sorry Brum, but in terms of culture, sport, and of course transport, you lost that one to Manchester many moons ago. So time for a quote from my favourite band, with whom I share my name, and who also happen to eminate from Britain’s real second city:

“Stop stop talking about who’s to blame, when all that counts is how to change.” – James, Born of Frustration.

The decision has been made, and we have to live with it. For anyone directly employed at the airport, or who’s business depends on the airport, this is a hard blow to take, especially as we approach what should be a busy summer, not to mention the excitement of the new flights to Poland.

I have lived in this area for 29 of the 31 years I have spent on this planet. Prior to moving to Coventry, I lived in north Leamington. I also took a substantial interest in green issues when at university, so I think I can see this debate from most angles. 

I have repeatedly pointed out that Coventry Airport needs an intelligent surface access (ie ground transport) strategy. They need to innovate, and to turn this obvious weakness into a strength – just laying on a couple of buses doesn’t do this. They need to look at the shared taxi system used by Chiltern Trains at Bicester North (where parking constraints are a real problem), or they need to investigate whether or not Thomsonfly’s customer database can be used to offer this service as an add-on (hey, potential revenue earner here too).

I don’t buy the argument that mitigation wasn’t sufficient. If this was the case, surely the inspectorate could have imposed greater restrictions on the airport. This is to be expected anyway, as environmental concerns continue to grab more headlines. Let’s not forget that 1 million departures each year would have sent £10m to the treasury, yet nimbys tend to go strangely silent when asked if some of that income should go towards mitigation schemes.

Noise and air pollution will be a problem at any airport, but it doesn’t take a genius to glance at a map, and see that the residential areas around Birmingham Airport are a great deal more dense than those around Coventry.

I still believe that this difference in noise footprint more than equates for any alleged lack of public transport at Coventry Airport - especially as most of Coventry’s passengers are on leisure trips anyway. Let us not forget that, for all Birmingham’s talk about having a station on site, 4 out of 5 people using it still arrive there by private transport or taxi. As with many other UK airport’s, Birmingham’s proximity to the main London to Birmingham railway line can be put down to an accident of geography, rather than any deliberate foresight. However much I would like to see more people getting to and from airports by public transport, this should never be a reason for an airport to be refused the opportunity to expand.

So I think that the environmental reasons for the refusal of planning permission can and should be challenged, however much of a whipping stick the media like to beat the aviation industry with. Once those are given a fair weighting, I think that the case for moderate, controlled and mitigated expansion at Coventry – which is all anyone has ever asked for – is entirely reasonable, and consistent with the needs of the Midlands as a whole.

Coventry Airport flights expansion refused – what went wrong?

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A couple of years back, I devoted a huge amount of time to defending Coventry Airport’s plans to launch more flights, and to cater for upto 2 million passengers per year.

Despite attempts by some of the anti-airport campaigners to suggest that I was doing this because I had commercial interests to protect, my reasons for getting involved boiled down to a simple belief that the airport’s plans were reasonable and moderate, and that they should be given full support.

It just happens to be that Flightmapping.com is based in Coventry, and that much of the opposition to the airport’s expansion plans was eminating from within the chattering classes of Warwick District, within which I had lived for many years. I have to give it to Warwick District Council, they are a tough bunch – much as though I completely disagree with the stance they have taken, their viewpoint has been vindicated – at least for now.

How different it might have been if the airport was in the boundaries of Coventry? I also can’t help wondering if the decision would have been the same, had TUI still maintained ownershop of the lease on the Coventry Airport site.

At some stage in the not to distant future, I will need to thoroughly digest the report, but I am still sensing that the grounds for refusal ultimately boil down to the presence of Birmingham Airport, rather than the inherent strength of local opposition. I expect that this is a combination of the pre-existence of Birmingham (for mainstream passenger purposes), the public transport provision that Birmingham offers, and its inherent political clout, rather than any individual reason – or grand conspiracy, as some commentators might suggest. I’ll leave the conspiracy theories to the government’s White Paper proposals to build a new airport near Rugby – an obvious political hoax if ever there was one!

Despite the obvious blow that the airport operators have just been dealt, this is far from over – there are appeals, and possible alternative submissions to think about. Meanwhile, the current terminal continues to operate, and to do so with planning permission.

I hope that the key political voices in Coventry will make their opinions known in the right places – shame on Jim Cunningham for caving in to the nimby arguments.

If a local shop of 70 years’ standing was refused planning permission to open a second checkout desk, on the grounds that there was a large supermarket with 12 desks, and plans to expand to 36 desks, just 120 yards away, there would be total outrage, and cries of bullying on the part of said supermarket. Yet shops also cause disturbances, albeit on a different scale. And don’t get me started on the nuisance going on outside a certain local pub last night!

I hope that people will sense a similar outrage over what has happened here, and that they will see through the political points scoring which is so easy to do these days in the name of the environment, when it is perfectly clear that there are other, far greater, vested interests at play.

Aviation v. Environmentalists – has the PR battle been lost?

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The debate over aviation’s contribution to climate change and other environmental problems was well under way when I started Flightmapping.com almost 5 years ago. I’ve never been one to pretend that this isn’t a serious issue, but it does appear that most industry bigwigs are finally waking up to this.

Earlier this month, Leo Van Wijk, who is vice-chairman of Air France-KLM, the world’s biggest airline by turnover, lashed out at the annual IATA conference, claiming that the industry was doing too little, too late.

I have always felt that the cost of flights should cover the so-called “externalities” of pollution, and that this can still be done whilst making sure that aviation also make a reasonable contribution to the exchequer. Prior to December’s doubling in Air Passenger Duty, I would have argued that there was still room for these costs to be accounted for, and that they should be done in a manner which was proportional to the pollution caused, or at least to the cost of the ticket.

Then Gordon Brown decides to not only double APD overnight, but to apply the increase to tickets which had already been purchased. So where was the public outcry over this extremely vindictive move? There wasn’t any – all we got was the green lobby telling us that this increase wasn’t enough. Judging by the carbon offset costs produced by DEFRA, and endorsed by websites like Climate Care, which puts the climate cost of a domestic flight at less than £1, this increase was more than enough, even if the government itself has already admitted that APD is a very “blunt instrument”.

My biggest gripe with the £10 APD is that it is levied in both directions on domestic sectors. Try telling a family of four living in Belfast that they should take a weekend break in (already expensive) London (£80 goes to Gordon), when they could drive down to tax-free Dublin, and fly three times further to Malaga, paying a mere €5.78 each for the return journey.

Unlike many within the aviation industry, I don’t think that global warming is a hoax, but I do like to try and understand as many angles to the argument as possible. One thing I am sure of is that there are more effective ways of reducing CO2 output than going after aviation.

We might be an easy target, but how many politicians realise that they can only ever exercise limited control over an industry that is inherently international. Perhaps that’s why we’ve suffered here in Coventry, but that’s for another debate.

If even a fraction of the extra billions raised from APD was diverted towards investing in better facilities for walking and cycling – including safe routes to school, then we’d all be better off. For all the unproven talk about radiative forcing at higher altitudes, vehicle emmissions at ground level are indisputable, and one way to limit these is to make the walking environment as safe and attractive as possible.

That’s what the Dutch and Swiss do, and it is no wonder that their levels of obesity are a fraction of ours. Unfortunately, both countries tend to operate under a much gentler form of democracy, whereas we have to sex everything up to keep the tabloids busy.

Sex up self powered transport anyone? Somehow the walk-a-mile-a-day club is never going to be as salacious as bashing the mile high club.

Aviation Industry continues green fight back

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I have just been pointed towards a long overdue website, which aims to provide information to counteract many of the false claims put forward by the environmental lobby, with regards to the pollution caused by flying.

The site is called enviro.aero.

As with any such websites, there are the usual caveats, but there is no longer any excuse for burying heads in the sand. Of course, this website is going to be biased towards protecting the aviation industry, but as the following article shows, the BBC isn’t exactly that neutral either!

Now if anyone doubts this assertion, lets take a look at the BBC’s coverage, or lack of it, of Easyjet’s recent announcement about their Ecojet initiative:

“Sorry

There are no results for “ecojet” on the BBC website.”

http://search.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?tab=all&q=ecojet&scope=all

This is hardly surprising really – I was at the press conference, and they do not appear to have even bothered to send a reporter – even if the venue was just a short walk (sorry, all expenses paid taxi ride) from BBC HQ.