Here’s a suggestion for our sandal wearing bearded greenie tree huggers.

We know how much the government likes to tax petrol for driving within the UK. And the Chancellor has also just admitted that Air Passenger Duty (APD) is just a revenue raising measure.

So, what about the pollution caused by rental cars? A road trip across the U.S. adds on a significant amount of extra emmissions on top of the flight over there. Should the government be taxing that too?

Outrageous? Surely, the responsibility to tax motoring is down to the government in which the car is being driven, and is no concern of the British government? Yet, this is exactly the line that the government has taken on long haul flights – as long as the booking originates in the UK, it can be taxed by HMRC, even if the long haul sector of the journey starts from another country, such as France or Germany.This leads to some people starting their journey at a foreign airport, whereas others make two separate booking to avoid the long-haul fee. We have already seen the rate of APd reduced on long haul flights from Belfast, as too many people were leaking to Dublin, where the flights tax is just €3, regardless of distance.

As airlines are increasingly thrusting car hire options in the faces of travellers who have no intention of taking them, should they not be taxed aswell?

Of course, this measure will never happen, but it does highlight the fallacy of a government trying to reach too far outside its borders to tax an activity that is inherently international.

We’re getting a lot of visitors coming to this blog asking about Aer Lingus card charges, and whether or not they will have to pay credit card fees.

Unfortunately, despite having a very easy to use flight search and book process, Aer Lingus are very confusing when it comes to extra charges.

We checked for return flights to Dublin in November, a time when both the outbound and the return trip were nominally ‘free’, but a surcharge of £19.99 was added for the Birmingham to Dublin flight, and £29.67 for the return trip. This seems strange, considering that the UK imposed Air Passenger Duty (APD) is much higher than the levy charged by the Irish government. This gave a subtotal of £49.66

The website states that a handling fee of €6 will be levied for card purchases, but this translates at a 1:1 conversion rate to £6 per person per sector, just like Ryanair. This gives us a total of £61.66 – a long way from the initial ‘free’ flight offering, but still a perfectly reasonable price for return flights across the Irish Sea.

Ryanair’s charging structure is even more confusing. On selecting flights for the same dates as Aer Lingus, two choices are offered – one with free online check-in, total £15.14, and the other with ‘no taxes and charges’, which works out at £11.99. The return is £11.99, either way, giving a subtotal of £23.98. After going through the incredibly annoying process of denying travel insurance (assuming you do have adequate cover already) and clicking below the hire car option, you get to enter your credit card details, which will add another £6 each way to the fare, bringing a total of £35.98, still only just over half the Aer Lingus cost.

The key difference between Aer Lingus and Ryanair when it comes to payment is that you can only avoid the Aer Lingus card charges by using Visa Electron, a card type which is no longer issued. Ryanair passengers can purchase a Ryanair Prepaid MasterCard, which can then be used to avoid the card handling fee. Many consumer groups have called this card a rip-off, but we think it should be noted that the Ryanir option does at least give people a way of avoiding the debit card surcharges, whereas airlines which only let passengers avoid their fees by using Visa Electron are being unfair, as this card is no longer issued.

I have never been one to favour Apple computer products, nor have I jumped on the iPhone bandwagon, but the one Apple product I use religiously is my iPod. I would go as far as saying this is one of the greatest technological inventions ever created.

Why is it so key? Just think back to not so long ago when Sony Walkmans first came out — suddenly we can all enjoy music on the move. Yet, Walkmans were often hissy and you were limited to the number of tapes you could carry with you at anyone time. Then came the Discman or portable CD player, which improved sound quality significantly and made it possible to jump between different tracks without having to rely on fiddly take counters. After this came the portable MP3 player, which was the giant leap forward, and even though there were other models around, the simple selection wheel design, backed by Apple’s iTunes system made the iPod a must have device.

Now, there is no need to carry volumes of compact discs around, entire music collection is can be stored on one tiny device. Combine with a good pair of noise cancelling headphones, and you can enhance any journey with whatever soundtrack takes your fancy.

A good portable entertainment system can make the difference between public transport being a hellishly noisy and unpleasant inconvenience and it being at worst tolerable and at best a joy. Granted, an iPod won’t get you any more space on a crowded Tube train, but it will help to soothe the noise of that crying baby in the seat behind you on your next flight. If it makes the difference between commuting by car and walking or using public transport, then that is a good thing for reducing congestion too. And that is just the iPod – the iPhone does this and far more.

RIP Steve Jobs.

Note – since writing this, people have pointed out that many Apple products, including the iPod,  are not the brainchild of Jobs himself. So what? He was Apple co-founder, and the company then went on to create even better things.

As I write about a new high speed line in Uzbekistan, which has been built for the cost of just 500 metres of High Speed 2, I remember that BMI are cutting back on their Heathrow to Manchester flights, so frequency this winter will be about half previous winter. They have already withdrawn their Heathrow to Leeds / Bradford and Durham Tees Valley flights, whereas they have left British Airways as the sole carrier between Heathrow and Glasgow.

Meanwhile, London City airport has also seen a pruning of its UK domestic flights network, with VLM firstly pulling off the Liverpool route, and then scaling back and subsequently withdrawing their Manchester flights. This isn’t all about so-called ‘high cost’ airlines – Ryanair no longer operate any flights within Great Britain, having axed their Stansted to Newquay flights (partly in a row over handling fees), and having recently stopped their Glasgow Prestwick to Stansted route, a service which once saw frequencies of upto 9 flights each day.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again – high speed rail has a clear role to play in providing alternatives to short-haul flights, particularly as many of the world’s busiest flight routes are under 500km,  distance which is very inefficient to serve by air, due to the huge energy requirements involved in take-off and landing.

Yet High Speed two will make little difference to UK domestic flights. This isn’t because we think Brits have an inherent hatred of trains – which would be farcical, since we invented the train itself, the maglev which the Germans have perfected, and we also pioneered high speed inter-city train travel, with Mallard’s top speed of 126 mph still being faster than the line speed of today’s Voyagers and Pendolini. Yet, this speed is still enough for our small island, and combined with a double dose of punitive flight taxes on domestic routes, it is enough for the train to win most of the market between London and Manchester. In fact, by the time HS2 gets built, if it gets built, as far as Manchester and Leeds, chances are that there will be no flights between either of these cities and London.

So the train has already one in this market. Building another train line will make the train a little bit more attractive, but it will do so at a cost that is prohibitive. Surely there are numerous better transport priorities for the government to consider.

I was reading this story in the Manchester Evening News, regarding a passenger who was asked to leave a Ryanair flight from Faro, because it was overbooked.

The passenger was called from the intercom, and told to get off, apparently due to her being the last to board. My initial reaction was that this couldn’t happen on Ryanair, because they have a strict policy of not doing overbooking. Naturally, this isn’t out of some kind of altruism on their part, it is a simple question of costs. Having to pay out denied boarding compensation, and then book passengers on another flights, which might not be available for three or four days, is simply much more expensive than letting seats go empty because people have booked a flight and then not turned up. So what happened here?

It turns out that a family had booked a child as a toddler, but that he was actually over two years old, so he needed his own seat. The flight was on the busy Faro to Manchester route in peak summer season, so all other seats were taken. Therefore, someone had to be offloaded.

So yes, Ryanair do not do overbooking, never have done, and presumably never will do. But in the rare times that this kind of incidence does occur, it would surely be much easier to ask for volunteers first, offering a suitable incentive to leave the plane, rather than force someone off, just because they happened to be the last one to board.