Fed up with high Air Passenger Duty on flights from the UK? Tough – it looks like taxes are likely to get a lot steeper on flights departing from airports in the USA.
In what USA Today are calling a rare show of unity, it looks like politicians from both side of the fence are accepting that increasing taxes on flights is a ‘low hanging fruit’ option which would be easy to implement, and which would just lead to airlines passing on the extra charges to passengers.
Perhaps politicians on the other side of the pond are being more honest in one respect – there is no suggestion of these taxes being an environmental levy, it is a simple means of providing some funds to help plug the multi-billion dollar budget deficit. Where they have an easy sell is in proposals to double the ‘security fee’ from $2.50 to $5 per flight – a move which will affect all UK visitors flying home, aswell as any UK tourists taking internal or connecting flights within the US. The irony, of course, is that this tax is totally disproportionate to the actual costs of providing security, which can also be met through the airport usage fee. In the USA, even now we have passed the 10 year anniversary of the 9/11 horrors, security is an easy sell – whereas in Europe I think we are a bit more sceptical.
There is also a proposal to tax each flight to the tune of $100 per departure – a proposal previously mooted in the UK, but never implemented.
No doubt our fresh-faced new transport secretary will be watching closely!