Aviation industry demands tax break as UK airports begin busiest week since March

As UK airports begin their busiest week since March, airlines are demanding a one-year “holiday” from Air Passenger Duty (APD) – the tax that adds at least GBP13 to adult air fares. More people are now flying from the UK than at any time since lockdown began in March. EasyJet says it expects to fly two-thirds more travellers this week compared with last. Far fewer passengers are being carried year-on-year, though, with easyJet planning to operate only 30 per cent of last year’s schedule in July, August and September 2020. Three of easyJet’s top destinations are in Spain: Palma, Alicante and Malaga. Amsterdam is the other high-performing location in terms of passengers. This week is Ryanair‘s busiest from the UK since mid-March, with passenger numbers in the hundreds of thousands. In the corresponding week last year, the figure was one million-plus. Ryanair says besides Spanish destinations, two Polish cities, Krakow and Warsaw, are among its best performing. The top destinations from Manchester and Stansted airports, both of them served by Ryanair and Jet2, match easyJet’s: the trio of Palma, Alicante and Malaga. In fourth and fifth places are Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands and Faro in Portugal – even though the Foreign Office currently warns against travel to the Portuguese mainland, and holidaymakers returning to the UK must quarantine for two weeks.<br/>