In most countries Jet A1 is already taxed for GA, only for commercial and training not.
This targets the airlines which would under these conditions get under tremendous problems, particularly EU airlines who have no possibility of tankering fuel elsewhere. The result would most likely be a collapse of the EU airlines system as it stands and a return to the Jet Set of the 1950ties where flying was only affordable for a small elite.
It depends if GA would be taxed additonally (on top of todays tax) which then would also hit them very hard or whether airliners simply would have to pay the same as today’s GA already does. In which case, GA may become more attractive as airline tickets would go through the roof.
The whole thing is election rethorics at the moment but can become bitter reality.
I don’t see that airline tickets would go ‘through the roof’. Even if you doubled the cost of fuel, the prices of airline tickets would at most double. In practice the cost of the aircraft, crew, landing and en-route fees mean that fuel is only 20-30% of the cost of a flight so you would need to increase fuel costs many times in order to double the price of a ticket.
It is, after all, unfair that you have to pay tax on fuel for a train going from London to Edinburgh but can take the plane over the same route without paying fuel tax. Or perhaps train and bus fuel should be untaxed.
I can’t see an increase on airline fuel tax ever making GA competitive again.
Do we actually know that e.g. a railway company or a bus company is paying fuel duty?
They are obviously not paying the VAT. Well, they are but they claim it back.
kwlf wrote:
I don’t see that airline tickets would go ‘through the roof’. Even if you doubled the cost of fuel, the prices of airline tickets would at most double.
At most double? That is through the roof in my book. In most cases, that is the end of many lower income classes to fly. It would be the end for me. Currently, a simple back and forth ticket for my family from my home to our relatives in BG is around €1500 return (3 people). If it doubles, it is € 3000. No way I can afford that. No way many could.
And that is only inner European. It’s a mistake to assume that European prices are on a Ryan Air niveau, those are very isolated prices.
My prediction would be that while business traffic would maybe loose 30-40%, holiday traffic would loose 60-80% of their regular customers. The hit would be the single worst hit since the 1970ties oil crisis. And it would hit the low to mid income classes the most, as well as with a reduction of 50% capacity put tens of thousands of airline staff, airport workers e.t.c out of a job.
And yes, it could well make GA more attractive unless they double the already taxed fuel price there as well. Today, if I want to fly with my family short haul to, say, something I can reach within 2 hours in my plane, I am already cheaper than most airline tickets. If airline tariffs double and the cost of GA flying stays the same, it may well become more attractive even with larger SEP’ or MEP’s to fly your family up to 500 NM. But that is a small improvement over a massive misery imposed on the lower end of the economy.
FWIW and per the thread title, I think the biggest customer for aviation (UAV) Diesel engines is the military and the government isn’t affected by tax issues on the Jet fuel they burn. They also pay some or all of the engine development cost, and there are new engines in development now.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
The whole thing is election rethorics at the moment but can become bitter reality.
Election rethorics for whom? What parties?
Peter wrote:
Do we actually know that e.g. a railway company or a bus company is paying fuel duty?
Electric railways won’t be paying fuel duty (e.g. HS1, the coming HS2, the west coast main line, east coast main line, most of the former Southern Region, most of the western/south wales routes etc).
Mooney_Driver wrote:
My prediction would be that while business traffic would maybe loose 30-40%, holiday traffic would loose 60-80% of their regular customers. The hit would be the single worst hit since the 1970ties oil crisis. And it would hit the low to mid income classes the most, as well as with a reduction of 50% capacity put tens of thousands of airline staff, airport workers e.t.c out of a job.
On the other hand, the Isle of Man would see a renaissance of tourism, as would other British seaside resorts like Blackpool and Weston-super-Mare, which were killed off by cheap package holidays – many of these towns having gone into a steep and vicious decline.
In any case, targetting the airlines is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Most people fly by airline once, maybe twice a year. But most people also drive a car to work, with a single occupant, five days a week. Per seat mile, a single occupant car is twice as bad as an A320 for CO2 emissions. Even if you were to simply completely ban CAT, it would be a fraction of the emissions of daily car commuting.
Point taken re. the East Coast Main Line being electrified. That said, there are still plenty that aren’t, and buses and coaches pay fuel duty. One presumes that the more expensive routes (for their distance) would be less affected by fuel prices.
I live in West Wales and we have seen a real resurgence of tourism recently, and a change in the demographic of the tourists. It used to be that it was only retired or unemployed class youngsters from the Midlands who would come on holiday here (something of a tradition because of the train line to Birmingham) but now there are Lancias and Ferraris on the streets and the sense of some real money being splashed around.
I think travel is wonderful, and overall a societal good, but personally I can’t contemplate flying any great distance for less than a week or two (or a work committment).
This 33¢/l is exactly the minimum level of excise on Jet A1 for non-CAT (“private”) use in the EU. I think what is being talked about, for quite some time already, is “simply” to levy it on CAT use, too. Possibly only intra-EU CAT.
