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Flybe has issued a challenge to Alistair Darling ahead of Monday's Pre-Budget Report. Responding to industry speculation that the Chancellor was preparing to impose a further increase to Air Passenger Duty (APD), Flybe reacted by calling upon Mr. Darling to think again.

Published: 24 Nov 2008

Flybe has issued a challenge to Alistair Darling ahead of Monday's Pre-Budget Report. Responding to industry speculation that the Chancellor was preparing to impose a further increase to Air Passenger Duty (APD), Flybe reacted by calling upon Mr. Darling to think again.

Stressing on a approach, which doesn't denote treating "British aviation as a cheap tax grab", the airline has called upon Mr. Darling to support the aviation industry by freezing or lowering the amount of tax taken from hard-pressed holidaymakers and business travellers."

Flybe's chairman and CEO, Jim French said: "The government has spent billions of pounds of taxpayers' money on bailing out the bankers in London and surely now it's the turn of hard-working families who save up for their annual holiday. Slapping a further tax on holiday flights and business travel will be the clearest message yet that the government will support the Square Mile while the UK regions are hung out to dry."

French added: "When the then-Chancellor Gordon Brown doubled APD in March 2007, there was an immediate drop in air travel by some four percent. It cannot be right that, at a time when even the government's own statistics show that aviation is more than covering its climate change costs, the Chancellor piles further pressure on one of the country's most successful industries and places further a burden on suffering UK businesses. Such a move will mean only one thing – fewer passengers and the inevitability of job losses. Remember, airlines have had to contend with record fuel prices, reducing demand and now the collapsing value of the pound which is even more of a problem than the high cost of fuel."