Cheapflights Ltd., the leading UK and North American internet media travel company, which pioneered online flight price search and comparison in 1996, regrets that the UK High Court judicial review has backed the British government’s increased “green” tax on air travel via its doubling of Air Passenger Duty (APD) retrospectively and failed to uphold a case against the tax presented by the Federation of Tour Operators (FTO).
Cheapflights supports any initiative to reduce global emissions of CO2 and other global warming gases but questions the effectiveness (apart from raising revenue for the Treasury) of unilateral UK action through the "blunt instrument" of direct taxation on the UK aviation industry. Furthermore the British Air Transport Association figure for UK aviation CO2 emissions is just 0.1% of total global CO2.
According to DEFRA the two major contributors to UK CO2 arethe road transport and residential sectors, both of which have seen an increase in CO2 emissions since 1990 and now account for over 50 per cent of the UK's carbon footprint. In contrast,based on UK aviation fuel bunkering records, UK and International carriers using British airports account for only an estimated 6 per cent of the UK's total CO2 emissions.
The projected growth of aviation traffic globally is certainly a factor to be taken into account in dealing with global warming and is being already addressed in the UK by the UK Aviation Industry whose Sustainable Aviation Initiative objectives include:
- Limiting climate change impact by improving fuel efficiency and CO2 emissions by 50 per cent per seat kilometre by 2020 compared with 2000 levels;
- Improving air quality by reducing nitrogen oxide emissions by 80 per cent over the same period;
- Lowering the perceived external noise of new aircraft by 50 per cent by 2020 compared with their 2000 equivalents;
- Establishing a common system for the reporting of total CO2 emissions and fleet fuel efficiency and pressing for aviation’s inclusion in the EU emissions trading scheme at the earliest possible date.
Any UK unilateral taxation (especially on fuel) and legislative action intending to attempt to reduce flights to or from the UK will drive traffic and business to other European hubs - to the detriment of the UK economy and UK employment in aviation and associated sectors. (See British Air Transportation Association website www.bata.uk.com). It will also hinder UK aviation's proactive steps to reduce all its green house emissions under the Sustainable Aviation initiative (see http://www.sustainableaviation.co.uk). International efforts to tackle global warming are definitely required but unilateral UK legislation and additional taxation of British air-travel is not the answer.
A better use of the environmentalists' excellent lobbying skills and resources would be to direct them towards the main global sources abroad, the USA and China's fossil fuel powered energy production. At home we should actively promote steps to reduce the domestic growth in residential and road transport emissions and to support UK aviation's proactive programme to reduce its emissions through incentives rather than additional taxation.
Commenting, David Soskin, CEO of Cheapflights Ltd said: "APD receipts have, of course, not been used by the Government to improve the environment but rather imposed as a stealth tax which is an increasingly important £2 billion contributor to the Chancellor’s tax pot. This tax - and any other financial deterrent measures to reduce flying by the UK public - will hit lower income families hardest and risks returning flying to the post-WWII preserve of the elite including, of course politicians, paid for by the public purse"
Notes to Editors - Cheapflights Ltd.
www.cheapflights.co.uk: Founded in 1996 and profitable since launch, Cheapflights is the UK’s leading UK flight price comparison website and pioneered the travel price comparison model on the Internet. It also introduced the pay-per-click business model to the UK in 2000.
Cheapflights is one of the few British internet companies successfully to establish an operation in the USA (www.cheapflights.com). Launched in May 2003, and currently with 2.6 million unique users a month, Cheapflights.com is already in the top 13 US travel sites (Hitwise US).
In April 2007, Cheapflights launched in Canada (www.cheapflights.ca).
Cheapflights does not sell any flight deals or travel products. Each day, it sorts millions of flight prices from hundreds of travel partners worldwide. It then publishes a filtered current list of the best deals. These deals can be accessed online or by telephone direct with the advertiser from links or information on our site. This makes Cheapflights one of the most comprehensive independent online publishers of flight deals available. It also has well established opt-in subscription weekly newsletters on both sides of the Atlantic with over 4 million subscribers. The Company has launched UK and USA "Flight News" blog sites, http://news.cheapflights.co.uk; and http://news.cheapflights.com. These have become major interactive communities to inform and assist travel consumers on both sides of the Atlantic.
Hitwise's statistics show Cheapflights as being in the UK's top 10 vertical search and price comparison sites in their Travel - Agencies sector for the past 19 quarters. Cheapflights now accounts for just under 1 per cent of all UK PPC advertising and 3.2 per cent of all UK online travel display adverts according to 2006 IAB figures. The Company's unique user numbers reached almost six million globally in January 2007.
Cheapflights estimates that it generated travel product sales of over US$1.8 billion for its advertising partners in 2006. These advertisers read like a Who’s Who of the travel world - ranging from British Airways, Thomson, Expedia, Travelocity, TUI and Thomas Cook. Cheapflights' newsletter advertisers include specialists like the Netherlands Travel Board, Pure Espana, SAS and Warner Breaks and specialist travel agencies such as Corsican Places, Anatolian Sky Holidays and Nita International.
In January 2007 Cheapflights invested in the Icelandic global flights planner, dohop ltd (www.dohop.com) and is represented on the dohop.com Board. The dohop.com free website enables travellers to research available flight routes and scheduled departures and arrivals worldwide and operates as a separate business to Cheapflights. It facilitates journey planning and is particularly helpful for finding unusual flight connections.
Cheapflights' status as an independent online travel price search and comparison and travel news site makes it a natural starting point for finding travel deals and up-to-date travel industry information from a neutral source on both sides of the Atlantic.
