Cape Town - The ridiculously high air passenger duty charged by the British government, based on the distance flown, is hitting demand for non-stop flights to London from South Africa so hard that Virgin Atlantic Airways warns it is undermining the sustainability of direct services.
The duty is one of the reasons why SAA has withdrawn its direct service to London from here, and why Emirates and Qatar Airways are attracting such a large share of travel to Britain. The tax adds more than R4 000 to the cost of flying nonstop to London for a family of four in economy class.
Since it is based on the distance flown by the aircraft in which passengers arrive in London, they pay only half as much if they arrive on a connecting flight from the Middle East.
Virgin and British Airways are among the airlines and travel companies that have been protesting vigorously.
Now, according to the Association of British Travel Agents, 49 percent of Conservative MPs in Britain believe it should be reduced. It was introduced to discourage “unnecessary flying” to combat global warming, but has been increased steadily as the government found it a useful source of income.
Unfortunately, this idea of taxing the airline industry on the grounds that aircraft emit CO2 has caught on and is being copied by other governments and the European Union, despite appeals by the airline industry to support its campaigns to reduce emissions, which include the production of aircraft that use less fuel, experimenting with biofuels causing less pollution, and changing permitted flight paths to reduce the distance covered.
Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk is one of a minority of politicians campaigning for this. He says tourism employs millions of people around the world and campaigns to stop travel are “a non-starter”, but the international campaigns organised by the industry itself are having an effect.
Gigaba’s flight agenda
We seem to have reason to worry that Minister of Public Enterprises Malusi Gigaba really is aiming at restoring SAA’s monopoly of our domestic airline market, which would certainly make our national carrier profitable or, at least, put it in a better financial position.
But it would be at the cost of making domestic air travel far more expensive and reducing the number of people who can afford to fly.
According to my colleagues on Business Report, Ann Crotty and Asha Speckman, Gigaba knew days before the airline’s board resigned that the government had agreed to give them the necessary R5 billion guarantee to enable it to acquire new generation fuel-economic aircraft, but kept the information from the board members until a majority of them had left. As a result, as Crotty has pointed out, he has been able to choose his own board, who will presumably agree with his opinions.
In remarks made earlier to the new board of South African Express, Gigaba made it clear he wanted the SAA group to dominate the airline market in this country and disapproved of SAA having awarded a franchise to a privately owned airline, Airlink.
It will be outrageous if some of the R5bn is spent on helping state-owned airlines to increase their share of the domestic market rather than helping SAA to be viable in international markets where it is competing with airlines from countries with stronger currencies, most of whom have already been able to invest in new, more modern, fleets.
1Time to fly to Vic Falls
On November 2, low-cost airline 1Time will start flying a new route between Joburg and Victoria Falls on behalf of its partner in a joint venture, Zimbabwean-registered Fresh Air. Blacky Komani, chief executive of 1Time, explained that it was “not a new route but rather a route swap between partners as it is replacing 1Time’s Livingstone flights”.
Komani said this had been agreed with Fresh Air, which has just been granted traffic rights for the route, before 1Time applied for Business Rescue, and involved no extra expense. The route was being introduced at an opportune time for Fresh Air, just at the start of the holiday season.
l Meanwhile, British Airways has announced a new measure aimed at encouraging frequent flyers who book on-line to travel with it. They have the option to ask next time they make an on-line booking for their personal details to be registered, so in future they will have to give only their names. - Weekend Argus