navylad

So the ‘Committee on Climate Change’ has written to the SOS transport given options for curbing emissions from aviation, including raising APD or applying a new Frequent Flyer tax, various media outlets are reporting today (Here’s the Guardians report which isn’t behind a pay wall https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.t...-cut-emissions)

Would this stop you chasing status? Would it curtail your TP runs? How might it work in practice?

1010101

Depends how much it is. If it was significant enough to actually curb flying then i would be travelling less for both work and holidays, and I don't think the UK needs to be making it more difficult to do business with other countries at the moment...

Misco60

I'd support an additional tax on those who fly the most frequently, whether for leisure or business, but can see absolutely no way in which it could work in practice and am pretty certain that it will never be implemented.

Bohinjska Bistrica

I don't see how this can possibly be applied without affecting the "family holiday" as the article suggests. If you fly for work (and most people don't really have a choice in this instance if work requires them to be somewhere) then your family holiday will Inevitably see you hit with extra taxes.

Guess it depends on the level it's set at. Even if it isn't set at a punitive level initially, it will get there given a few years. APD itself is already high in the UK compared with other countries.

Elevate

I don't believe the UK should have its taxation policy decided by a 16 year old actress. However the place does seem rather incapable of self-government at the moment and virtue-signalling remains all the rage.

To answer the OP's question it would not affect my participation in the Executive Club other than to change my registered address if measures were specifically targeted at UK residents. I haven't lived in the UK for 20 years and only use a family address there for post. If it meant an increase on APD then I would switch hub from LHR to elsewhere but quite possibly still within the OneWorld alliance.

navylad

My concern here, is that it would disproportionate affect British airlines, specifically BA, but to a lesser extent other airlines. I understand the reasoning behind it, and I personally don’t do TP runs without time in locations to enjoy and explore along the way.

I also think the claim that airline emissions will be the biggest polluter by 2050 isn’t credible; there is clearly a big push to reduce emissions within the sector through design and a tax levy has been demonstrated to thus far be significantly punitive to alter habits.

I wonder how the counter argument to the committee’s letter is being out to the SoS, would the airline industry respond? I wonder if BA would consider changing how BAEC members earn as a result (perhaps going to a distant based system which would encourage P2P flying which is more environmentally friendly). Perhaps an alternative, paying carbon offset from the ticket price rather than as an optional extra.

sodaisei

Yes please. Bring back the times were only rich people could fly. I hate to fly with poor people.

nufnuf77

I know the smells not to mention the manners...

T8191

What is "frequent flying"? Does my typical 5 holidays a year count as 'frequent'? Do they envisage a cap on the number of after which additional tax is applied, or will everyone suffer?

Bloody Greta ... please GO AWAY.

nufnuf77

It’s all virtue signaling nonsense

teledude

The Bremen office would be recieving most of my business from offshore accounts. #jimmy

deboyzoned

If only rich people could spell correctly 😊

alvinlwh

I agree with you, I laugh when I heard her yesterday on the BBC. She talked about her "dreams", well, what about my dreams to travel the world? I am glad that Trump ignored her and the camera caught her self important head exploding.

13901

It's really saying something about our world that a 16-year-old can be so reviled. One might or mightn't like her ways, but shall we just bear in mind we're talking about a minor with Asperger?


On the actual topic of curtailing flights: there's no denying, at least in my view, that climate change is real and is happening. I have photos from the early 2000s of a glacier in the Alps, and last year I found that it'd retreated 300 meters (the tongue) and almost 100 meters in altitude. And there's loads of other examples. I don't know, and I don't think that anyone really can, claim with absolute certainty that human activities are causing 100% of climate change, but we can't discount the possibility that we're contributing to it either. The way I see it, it's (also) my responsibility to do some change in the little means at my disposal. Can I stop coal-powered stations in China from being built? Can I stop Trump from being the nonsensical oaf he is being vis-a-vis his energy policy? No. But I can do something with regards to my own lifestyle.

In this sense, my biggest CO2 emissions come from flying. I've taken up offsetting all my flights, not just by ticking the 'BA box' but on using offsetting companies, and I'm limiting my flights too. From a work point of view, I only fly if I've got to attend workshops or face-to-face meetings that really can't be done remotely (mainly because I've just come to the realisation that I'd much rather sleep in my bed than in Busan, or Houston... were we to do business in Bahia or Buenos Aires I'd find it a lot harder) and from a pleasure point of view I've stopped doing mileage runs. So a taxation, if really used to be reinvested in renewables or CO2 capture or things like this, on a £ to £ basis, would be fine with me.

garykung

Don't worry. This won't happen.

If the committee is serious about emissions, then the U.K. has to overhaul its emission standards, not just following the Euro VI standard.

An environmental tax is not an answer.