FURTHER to your interesting article on Air Passenger Duty (Travel Weekly April 26), I was surprised that nobody from the ‘front-line’ was interviewed about this stealth tax, invented by the Americans, introduced by the Tories and doubled by the Socialists.
I bet not one of the people you interviewed has ever tried to explain to Joe Public what this tax is all about. As Ryanair’s Tim Jeans rightly points out, the money is not reinvested into the infrastructure of the airline business, it is squandered into government coffers.
However, the real issue is that I wish the airlines would advertise and sell their tickets as a gross amount. Nothing in the price of an airline ticket is reclaimable, similar to the VATin a product sold in a shop. I am not interested in any APD, Passenger Service Charge or any other add-ons that the government or the airlines can think of to add to the cost of the ticket. As in the pricing structure in supermarkets (as laid down by law) the price you see is the price you pay. Trying to explain all the extra charges wastes time and energy, especially to certain members of the public. Mistakes do happen and if one of our consultants makes an error, then it is hard trying to persuade your client to pay the difference. The relative price of an airline ticket over the last 20 years has rapidly decreased and possibly the real issue is that many airline tickets are just too cheap and this government is taking advantage of that.
Richard Vanbergen, Director, Flex-able Travel Limited,
Huntingdon, Cambs