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Budget airline bosses criticize increasingly heavy regulation

iht.com

LONDON: Low-cost airlines are unfairly carrying the burden of concerns about the environmental impact of flying, executives from budget carriers claimed Tuesday as they criticized increasingly heavy regulation and taxes.

Taxes should be based on the efficiency of planes and the distance traveled rather than being a per-passenger duty, said easyJet Chief Executive Andy Harrison, who has led calls for a change to the regulatory system for Britain.

Harrison said that most budget carriers were more efficient than the traditional airlines because their fleets were newer and more fuel efficient, countering frequent claims that the industry was contributing to climate change by encouraging more people to fly.

"Low-cost aviation is being almost demonized," Harrison said at the annual World Low Cost Airlines Congress. "We are being charged with destroying the planet."

Tim Jeans, managing director of Monarch's scheduled services, said the industry needed to "separate the science from the spin," noting that some critics had called for people to avoid flying altogether.

John Hanlon, secretary general of the European Low Fares Airline Association, said the growth of the low-cost industry had opened up air travel "from the prerogative of the wealthy few to something that everybody can contemplate."

Low-cost carriers were also broadening the financial community by allowing staff from smaller businesses to travel, Hanlon said.

Statistics from the Official Airline Guide show that low-cost flights account for 16 percent of flights and 20 percent of all seats worldwide, up from 14 percent and 17 percent a year ago. Budget airlines plan to offer more than 58 million seats on more than 392,000 flights worldwide this month, compared with 47 million seats on more than 326,000 flights in September 2006.

The industry's growth in Europe had been facilitated by deregulation a decade ago, Hanlon said, but tightening rules were threatening further growth.

"We need to be vigilant we don't become progressively re-regulated almost by stealth," he said.

However, low-cost airlines have yet to form a consensus on how to tackle green issues.

Harrison acknowledges that global warming is a "clear and present danger" that requires "intelligent debate."

But Ryanair Holdings Group PLC Chief Executive Michael O'Leary has been outspoken in rejecting the notion that aircraft are a significant generator of greenhouse gases. He has said power plants are responsible for a quarter of the world's carbon emissions while aviation accounts for less than 2 percent.

Harrison said the tax that the British government introduced in February to help compensate for damage to the climate from carbon emissions, which imposes a duty on individual passengers, should be scrapped.

The duty, or APD, is not imposed on cargo flights or private jets and ignores the load factor and the aircraft type.

"You pay the same APD whether flying on new easyJet planes or older Alitalia aircraft," Harrison said. "You pay the same whether the aircraft is 80 percent full or empty."

However, Virgin Atlantic Airways has said it wants to retain the APD for short-haul flights, and British Airways PLC wants to use the duty to offset carbon emissions.

Harrison also supports an EU plan for airlines to join an emissions trading system.

The United States has alleged that such a plan is incompatible with international aviation rules if applied to all air flights in and out of Europe. U.S. officials warned that they could approve the plan only if it was limited to airlines flying within Europe.

Harrison has said that easyJet would support it only if the plan included all flights in and out of Europe.

Hanlon said that around 12 percent of emissions in the European Union could be cut further with consolidation of traffic control.

More than 130 airlines are meeting in London over two days to discuss a range of issues from regulation to fuel prices.

 Printable Version  | published Sep 18, 2007