By Jason Moore
THE airlines are furious over British government plans to raise the air passenger tax and they have even put on a united front. Now, these are the same airlines who charge you 3.50 euros for a small bottle of water (in the supermarket the same article costs about a euro), they charge you in some instances for sitting together, they charge you a small fortune for a small sandwich, and penalise you excessively if your suitcase is slightly overweight.
And now they moan about a tax which they will pass on to the air passenger anyhow! The British government are desperately in need of cash at the moment and have therefore targetted the airline industry to raise the money. It might be a good public relations stunt to get all the airlines together but at the end of the day they are fighting an increase which works out at about five pounds on an family of four, that is a quarter of the cost of an airline meal! So really if anyone should be moaning about higher taxes it should be the good old airline passenger who has to pay all the surcharges but doesn´t even have the right to complain. If the airlines want to show how much they care then perhaps then could pay the additional tax out of their enormous profits.
PS The general strike in Britain didn´t cause any disruption to flights to and from Britain yesterday. That is the good news. The bad news is that there were no flights at all from Palma airport to Britain yesterday!