London City Airport boss calls for Government lobbying
21.06.10
Richard Gooding, CEO at London City Airport, has called on the business travel community to lobby the new coalition Government on its plans for the future of aviation. Speaking at the Business Travel Market last week, Mr Gooding said the aviation industry was under increased pressure from ‘scary’ changes to Air Passenger Duty (APD) and constraints on airport expansion.
The Government plans to scrap the current per passenger APD in favour of a per plane tax, which some airlines, including easyJet, will welcome whilst other full service airlines with lower passengers per plane, such as BA, will not. But Mr Gooding warned: ‘The scary bit is that the government has set out to increase the take from APD by 40%.’
On airport expansion he said that as Britain is an island nation, it relies more on air transport than any other European country, and that if transport links did not keep pace with the continent, the UK may lose business. ‘You could argue we [London City Airport] like the idea of Heathrow being constrained. In the short term that may be true, but we have to take a long term view. Travel will go to the continent and eventually the big institutions will move.’
Mr Gooding said the industry needed to be more ‘robust’ in countering constraints on aviation.
‘This industry has the capability of lobbying about these things. So far we've been poor.'
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