Aviation Industry Condemns German Air Tax

By -
The European airline industry has rebuked the German government for its proposal to introduce a tax on air travel at German air terminals, to generate an additional EUR1bn annually to fund environmental initiatives.
The announcement has been attacked as an unwelcome burden on the industry when it is already struggling with low, but improving, consumer demand and the aftermath of the Icelandic volcano crisis. Michael Engel, the director of the German Airline Association said the tax would equate to around EUR10-15 on airfares.
Responding to the announcement, International Air Transport Association (IATA) Chief Executive Officer, Giovanni Bisignani, denounced the proposals as “a short-sighted policy,” and “a cash-grab by a cash-strapped government.”
“Painting [the proposal] green adds insult to injury; there will be no environmental benefit from the economic damage caused,” he added.
In its recent global outlook report, which predicted rising profits for the aviation industry in general, IATA noted that European airlines remain in the red. IATA expects the region to post losses of USD2.8bn at the end of 2010, less than the USD4.3bn loss the industry posted at end-2009.
“Even as a cash-grab, the proposed tax makes no sense. The Dutch government tried to raise EUR300m with a similar tax. It cost the Dutch economy EUR1.2bn in lost business,” Bisignani continued. He surmised that the tax would likely just encourage travelers to use airports in bordering countries with more “tax-sensible regimes,” ultimately having a more detrimental impact on the environment.
“The Dutch had the good sense to repeal their tax. Why repeat past mistakes?” questioned Bisignani.
The tax was announced as part of consolidation measures worth EUR80bn in the German coalition government's fiscal plan to tackle the country’s deficit.


Source : http://www.tax-news.com/news/Aviation_Industry_Condemns_German_Air_Tax____43726.html

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should frequent flyers pay for the decarbonization of the air industry?

By -
Image
Researchers are proposing a frequent flyer tax to pay for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the airline industry. A new paper from the International Council on Clean Transportation proposed the tax as a way to fund some of the $121 billion that needs to get invested every year to decarbonize flying. "Varying the levy based on flying frequency focuses the tax burden on wealthier frequent flyers and helps ensure that people with lower incomes are not priced out of air travel because of climate policy," the study's authors, Xinyi Sola Zheng and Dan Rutherford, wrote. A sliding fee for flights beginning at $9 for the second flight and $177 for their twentieth in a given year would raise $121 billion -- versus a flat tax of $25 per ticket for all flights. For the study's authors, the tax is a way to avoid penalizing people in lower income brackets and shifting the load to the wealthiest 10 percent of the world's population. Not only would the revenues come from wea
Read more

Autonomous aviation startup Xwing hits $400M valuation after latest funding round

By -
Image
  The safety pilot has his hands off the controls during an Xwing demonstration flight. Image Credits: Xwing Xwing has scored another win two months after it completed its first gate-to-gate autonomous demonstration flight of a commercial cargo aircraft. The company said Thursday it has raised $40 million at a post-money valuation of $400 million. The company is setting its sights on expansion — not only tripling its engineering team, but eventually running regular fully unmanned commercial cargo flights. Xwing has been developing a technology stack to convert aircraft, including a widely used Cessna Grand Caravan 208B, to function autonomously. But it’s had to solve a few problems first: “the perception problem, the planning problem and the control problem,” Xwing founder Marc Piette explained to TechCrunch. The company has come up with a whole suite of solutions to solve for these problems, including integrating lidar, radar and cameras on the plane; retrofitting the servomotors that
Read more