Passengers who have already booked with some scheduled airlines should expect to be invoiced for unpaid Air Passenger Duty following the Government’s decision to double the charge from February 1.
The British Air Transport Association puts the industry’s retrospective tax bill at £100 million.
Monarch Scheduled and EasyJet both plan to collect any unpaid tax. However, British Airways will absorb the £11 million cost rather than levy passengers, and Ryanair has told the Treasury it will not pay the retrospective tax and is prepared to go to court.
A Ryanair spokesman said: “We are not collecting it from passengers.” The carrier had 450,000 passengers booked at the time of Brown’s announcement, amounting to a bill for £2.25 million.
EasyJet said its 800,000 forward bookings left it with a bill for £4 million. Monarch has 180,000 advance bookings and faces a bill close to £1 million. Managing director Tim Jeans said: “Unpaid APD could be flagged at check-in and people directed to our ticket desks.”
BMI is likely to absorb the cost of the tax. A spokesman said: “Collecting APD at airports would be challenging.”