Air Passenger Duty (APD) is charged per passenger per flight, and the programme starts by tripling the APD rates to fund nationwide free local bus services in the first year. The logic is that local transport is more important to society and the economy than flying, and that flying is more environmentally damaging than buses.
The increase will generate most of its revenue from APD applied to long-haul flights in upgrade classes. The additional cost per Economy seat to a European destination will be £26, and £180 on a Premium Economy seat to the USA. Most people will save more from free buses than than the premium they’ll pay to fly (half the UK does not fly in any given year).
APD is easy to change and is collected by airlines when they sell tickets, so requires no additional systems to collect.
Assuming a 11% fall off in flights in the first year as a result of the increased costs, the revenue generated will be an extra £6.7 billion, supplemented by an extra £1.3 billion in VAT from extra UK holiday spending.
VAT on Private Aviation
Closing the loopholes on private jets
As a complement to the increases in APD for ordinary travel on scheduled flights, VAT will be applied to parts of private aviation that are currently excluded. This raises £0.3 billion a year and can be implemented through rule changes. See appendix in Related below.