A mysterious £8.90 tax is being added to all Heathrow flights

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• Julian says:

  9 Feb9 February 09:53

  The government has wasted all this money on making people completely unproductive on Furlough yet won’t bail out the airports on their losses from loss of revenue from customers flying, which is plain (not the other sort of plane) stupid. Similarly they are reintroducing full VAT and full Stamp Duty on houses when the economy is plainly still a very long way away from going completely back to normal.

  Post the lock down huge numbers of people who have any choice aren’t going to fly until all the nonsense with a test before you go away, when you get there, after you have quarantined for x days from arrivale and another test x days before your return and another test on arrival home followed by quarantine at home, even if not in a guarded hotel for the majority (as a most extreme case) goes away.

  Trying to recover their losses from potential customers on an absurd flat rate per flight basis (which is ridiculous as that means they are penalising flying short haul far more) is just going to crucify the chances of people returning to flying in large numbers any time soon far more.

  Also Heathrow now has competition from other airports and I am sure that Gatwick would jump at the chance to get their close parallel runway through planning and built as soon as possible and so massively damage the potential returns on Heathrow’s third runway, given that so far despite COVID every possible effort has been made to defend slots and keep lower cost Easyjet, Ryanair and Wizz out of Heathrow on the rash assumption that things will go back to exactly how they were before in the near future while passengers are still required to jump through these numerous highly obstructive hoops to getting on a flight.

  Well only time will tell if this is a strategy that works I suppose………….

  • sloth says:

    9 Feb9 February 10:20

    why should the government bail out airports on their losses? thats what shareholders are for…heathrow is my closest airport (15 miles) but I recognise they are not the only airport

    • Brian says:

      9 Feb9 February 10:24

      To be fair, the Qatar and Chinese governments probably don’t have the money, hence why the need a U.K. government bailout. Oh wait.

    • Rob says:

      9 Feb9 February 10:35

      Heathrow is not allowed to charge what it wants. It is subject to price caps to stop it abusing its market position. Simplistically, it believes that as its profits are capped then its losses should be capped too.

      • memesweeper says:

        9 Feb9 February 12:01

        Simplistically, if it goes bust, who cares? Administrators step in and it’s sold on as a going concern. The shareholders should suck it up, or sell out.

      • sloth says:

        9 Feb9 February 14:09

        juts because its what Heathrow believes, doest make it right…eod the shareholders bought into the company knowing the capped prices situation…

  • kitten says:

    9 Feb9 February 13:54

    Julian : people being supported through furlough and publically availablw benefits is one thing

    Businesses are supposed to manage themselves using the multiplicity of commercial solutions available to them. Those businesses that have been doted the ability to collect rents off a monopoly position should not be allowed to abuse consumers.

    • kitten says:

      9 Feb9 February 13:57

      Private equity could suggest many solutions here far, far before any suggestion of allowing Heathrow to abuse consumers given the monopoly profits they have enjoyed.

      I hope Heathrow goes bust. As another poster says there will be others that are prepared to take up the assets.

• Steve says:

  9 Feb9 February 10:24

  Is this extra £8.90 going to be added to the cost of Avios redemptions?

  • Rob says:

    9 Feb9 February 10:31

    Yes, except Reward Flight Saver

    • Mikeact says:

      9 Feb9 February 11:04

      I guess it’s pretty good of BA to part pay my RFS bookings..£35/50 is still remarkable value.

      • Sarah says:

        9 Feb9 February 11:07

        Shhh, you’ll give BA ideas…

      • Alex Sm says:

        9 Feb9 February 15:54

        They will go up to £45/£60 very soon, believe me

• marcw says:

  9 Feb9 February 10:25

  Now consumers have to pay directly airline costs. Previously we paid it indirectly – now it’s being paid directly by us.
  This has been orchestrated by BOTH the AIRLINES and HEATHROW.

  • ChrisC says:

    9 Feb9 February 10:44

    What do you think the “passenger service fee” was for it wasn’t for the airport costs that aren’t included in the landing fees?

    • marcw says:

      9 Feb9 February 12:48

      Not everything is covered by the pax service fee. Check-in desks? Baggage handling system and storage? are just a few …
      What happens here is that previously yearly contracts with airlines are now power-by-the-hour (=pax) contracts.
      Airport and airlines are very happy about this.

• Steve says:

  9 Feb9 February 10:42

  “The surcharge will, in theory, disappear when passenger volumes return to normal and the backlog of underpayments has been cleared.”
  Yes, I’m sure it will disappear and we won’t be revisiting this when it increases to £10.00 next year and £12.50 in 2023.

  • Ming the Merciless says:

    9 Feb9 February 14:12

    Similar to Income tax, a temporary tax to help through tough times that never gets removed. (Napoleonic wars from memory)

• George K says:

  9 Feb9 February 10:49

  Ripoff Britain. The fee could have been £28.40 and we still wouldn’t be able to do anything about it

  • ChrisC says:

    9 Feb9 February 11:26

    True but at least it’s out in the open and not hidden in the base fare, airline surcharges or the passenger service fee.

    • kitten says:

      9 Feb9 February 13:30

      has the regulator sanctioned this? can it be legally challenged?

      other businesses have lost money too but are not in a position to abuse customers when their business suffers an event their business planning and saving alongside any relevant business interruption insurance, should be what they turn to.

      Given the enormous profits made in this business due to being given a monopoly to collect rent off, this is an abuse of monopoly power by Heathrow.

      They should suffer and deal like other businesses have to and should not be allowed to abuse their monopoly position

      • kitten says:

        9 Feb9 February 13:32

        If they need money to get through this they should turn to their shareholders, restructure, lease out assets etc like other businesses are having to.

        • Dom says:

          10 Feb10 February 00:23

          Yup. This country is a massive scam. And every political party just loves bending over for the shareholders.

• Fenny says:

  9 Feb9 February 11:26

  Good job I have no current plans to fly from LHR. Whether or not it disappears in the future is another matter.

• babyg says:

  9 Feb9 February 11:28

  People could vote with their feet (avoid LHR)… but alas people wont, its either too much of a hassle or it would cost more the £8.90 to get to an alternative airport. Whats galling is the profits they make in the good years, only to have nothing in the coffers to ride out the bad years…

  • kitten says:

    9 Feb9 February 13:35

    exactly. see my comments above. Time the UK stopped the shareholders of UK monopolies they’ve granted taking money in good years then deciding to run bad years on current account that they then abuse their business partners and UK customers to fill.

• David Cohen says:

  9 Feb9 February 14:22

  I guess my question is why is it £8.90? What calculations have gone into coming up with that amount? If the PSC can’t be increased without the CAA’s agreement, surely they’re (even more) pointless that I thought they were if they have no powers to prevent Heathrow adding a further charge.

  Finally, the blurb that Heathrow published about this seems to imply it’s at the airlines’ request. However IAG appear to contradict this.

  It would be good to get some confirmation of exactly who asked for this, and where the funds go.

  • Rob says:

    9 Feb9 February 15:13

    The document does break out fairly well what items are included. What we don’t know is over what period Heathrow is collecting what it is due.

    Does it plan to charge £8.90 for 6 months to recover the underpayments for 2020? Or 12 months? Why not £4.45 for 24 months in that case?

    • TGLoyalty says:

      9 Feb9 February 15:26

      NPV … would mean larger overall cost recovery.

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