The Big Question: Is it finally time to turn APD into an environmental tax?

Air travel is extremely bad for our climate. Yet flights are hardly taxed at all. Aviation doesn’t pay a single penny of tax on all the fuel it burns, and flights have the same zero VAT rating as essential items like baby clothes or a wheelchair.

And the only tax that’s paid on flights, Air Passenger Duty, isn’t designed to reflect the climate impacts of flights, or to encourage people to choose cleaner forms of transport.

Change is needed. APD should be reformed to disincentivise frequent flying, and the tax-take should be reinvested into low-carbon transport alternatives to flying, like rail travel.

Nearly half of people in the UK do not fly at all, or fly once per year, according to government figures. A small group of people who fly frequently are responsible for most of the emissions from air travel, yet we are all paying the heavy price for climate breakdown.

This is why APD should be replaced by a frequent flyer levy, which would place a higher tax burden on those people who fly more often, while ensuring occasional air travel remains affordable.

We also need to start properly taxing the most wasteful and excessive uses of air travel, such as private jets, which get away with paying the same rate of tax as passengers on standard flights – or no tax at all.

Polluting industries such as aviation need to start paying their fair share, and stop expecting to get a free ride at the expense of our climate. Let’s take that frequent flyer levy money and invest it in greener ways of travelling, whether domestically or internationally.

Rob Bryher is an aviation campaigner at climate action charity Possible.

It’s incomprehensible that aviation is so vastly under-taxed. There’s no tax on airline fuel, and no VAT on plane tickets. Aviation epitomises the inequality of climate change, where those who do the least to cause it suffer the most. The vast majority of the global population is unable to access air travel, but we all pay the price of rising emissions.

It therefore makes sense for high- polluting activities such as flying to be taxed and for that revenue to be used to mitigate the harmful effects. The “polluter pays” principle is a fair way to address the climate crisis.

Air Passenger Duty (APD) is the only tax applied to aviation in the UK, so the £4.5 billion it raises each year should be ring-fenced for carbon-reduction measures rather than going directly to the Treasury.

There are many things that can be done to decarbonise aviation, although many people – including our politicians – stop at “green” technology and alternative fuels. While these things have their place, they won’t bring aviation emissions down quickly enough to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

A truly climate- friendly and forward-looking transport system is one in which taxation applied to the highest polluters (aircraft) is invested in the lowest polluters (trains).

Facilitating a mass movement away from air travel is the only way to meaningfully and substantially reduce aviation emissions, and this would be far better done by investing in existing grounded transportation rather than the promise of future technology.

Anna Hughes is director of Flight Free UK.

The Big Question is a monthly feature from TTG taking on some of the burning issues facing travel through expert commentary, insight and debate. While it's not designed to be adversarial, it won't flinch from placing a spotlight on some often uncomfortable topics travel – like it or not – will one day have to reckon with.

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