Because, for a start, without tax there would be no aircraft to fly.
Or airports to fly to.
Or safety systems to ensure people will take the risk of flying.
Or people with enough income to afford to fly.
Or, come to that, international stability that has been the bedrock of the expansion of international travel.
But all of that is ignored by these airlines who think that is anyone else’s business but there’s.
Except it’s not. Our duty is to make it our business.
And we could.
We could require that pilots and crew are employed by airlines, for example, or refuse them the right to land.
We could insist too that aircraft were owned in locations where there was accountability for that ownership – because that is key to the good governance that should be at the heart of safe travel.
And we could require that airlines be taxed on a unitary basis – i.e. from where they take off and land.
And that would just start the process.
What?
Considering how much money airlines loose on average, the idea that they don’t pay any tax seems strange.
I refuse to take any notice of a comment from an individual so ignorant as to not know the difference between “there” and “their”.
Impressive
I would be embarrassed to be so brilliant.
Didn’t the Wright Brothers get off the ground without tax? (he asked quietly)
Go back to £300 for a return flight to Brussels on BA or Sabena ? How about no.
@ Stigler – WTF would you want to go to Brussels unless you were aboard say a Lancaster bomber.
Looking at his first five statements quoted above, the only one that bears any arguable relationship to the truth is the safety one.
But flight is such an inherently dangerous activity (and people are so inherently bad at risk analysis) that I suspect “the market” would have sorted it in the absence of the CAA, FAA and various other acronyms.
Mind you, it might make me even less likely to fly Ryanair (which is pretty damn unlikely already) if I didn’t know that somebody, somewhere, was enforcing standards on something on them.
>>Mind you, it might make me even less likely to fly Ryanair (which is pretty damn unlikely already) if I didn’t know that somebody, somewhere, was enforcing standards on something on them.
What is it with some people and Ryanair? SE clearly hasn’t flown with them, and yet feels competent to comment on them and implicitly slag them off.
The market enforces standards on Ryanair. People wouldn’t fly with an airline whose planes kept crashing, and I think Mr O’Leary is well aware of that.
bilbaoboy beat me to it
So, I’ll just add the first aviator(s) were either Wayland Smith or Daedalus and Icaruis, in either case fleeing an oppressive regime.
The bedrock of international travel was merchant venturers, travelling to collect and/or sell raw materials and finished goods. How much international stability was there when the Phoenicians and Carthaginians travelled to Cornwall to buy tin?
Icarus was a notorious tax-dodger, I expect, which is why his flight came to grief.
@SE “But flight is such an inherently dangerous activity (and people are so inherently bad at risk analysis) that I suspect “the market” would have sorted it in the absence of the CAA, FAA and various other acronyms. ”
But in lefty-world, you see, more profit is made by taking passengers money and then killing them in crashes, just as private hospitals coin it in by killing all their patients.
If that’s the statists’ idea of business acumen then thank goodness they don’t put the state in charge of real airlines and health services … what’s that you say? Cubana and Mid Staffs? Oh …
Describing not imposing tax as a subsidy is really rather naughty too. ( passengers <12 don't attract airport duty).
“Mind you, it might make me even less likely to fly Ryanair (which is pretty damn unlikely already) if I didn’t know that somebody, somewhere, was enforcing standards on something on them.”
I think you have this entirely wrong SE.
a) Ryanair deliver exactly what they say they will, which means zero customer service. What you do get (apart from the transport) is the benefit of their ruthless efficiency; best punctuality record, no hanging around once the plane lands, no fannying about with overhead storage etc. For the impatient, and/or those travelling on business they’re perfect.
b) A crash is a huge cost and a massive pain in the arse. I imagine Ryanair take this more seiously than, say, Air France.
Bloke in Italy,
Business.
I did however once make the mistake of seeing it because someone recommended it, and wished I hadn’t.
I blame the Wrong Brothers.
Jack C
“Best punctuality record” LOL
The first time I flew Ryanair (because it seemed to be the only option) the plane was over an hour late. A few days later a young woman arrived at the hotel where we wre staying late at night by taxi because her Ryanair was so late that she, and every other passenger, missed the last bus into town.
Zero customer service is flattering. The second time we flew Ryanair (again because it was the only option) when we got to the check-in for the return flight we learned that there was an “airport security fee” that only applied to Ryanair passengers. Fortunately I had some spare Euros because my wife had objected to my idea of splashing on afancy m,eal on our last evening. Some unfortunates only discovered this when they tried to go through passport control.
john77
Punctuality: apparently so, at least in Europe and in most years. I can believe it from my limited experience
I can’t comment on the “airport security fee”. If it wasn’t advertised, then you didn’t need to say it. Sounds a little dodgy to me.
The great thing is, of course, that you don’t have to use them if you don’t wish to. Meanwhile, The Great Man bemoans the fact that a flight to Denmark is now much less than it was 35 years ago (in absolute terms, and despite heavy air travel taxes). I think he’s missing the point .
The cost of my next flight is two-thirds tax. is that not enough?
I think Ryanair get their punctuality stats by setting their flight durations far longer than would ever be realistically taken.
For example, going by the Ryanair departure/arrival times the flight from Edinburgh to Dublin would be expected to take around 90 minutes. As the actual flight time is around 50 minutes then Ryanair build in quite a margin to ensure that they are never “late”.
This Murphy-reasoning is fun to do.
Without mining, there would be no aircraft to fly.
Without fossil fuels, there would be no aircraft to fly.
So what is the aviation industry doing to support mining and fossil fuel? Why aren’t they leading the campaign against loony left environmental groups? Why aren’t they using their profits to buy shares in mining and oil companies and supporting those who allow them to remain in the sky?
Let’s make it our business to ensure they do.
Bloke In Italy – “WTF would you want to go to Brussels unless you were aboard say a Lancaster bomber.”
Brussels is actually a very nice city. I mean, I take your point. And we do still have at least one Vulcan still flying. But the fact that the city is full of sh!ts should not distract from the other fact that apart from the sh!ts, Brussels is actually a charming place to visit and a nice place to live.
Although I might have simply been confused by so many people who 1. spoke French and 2. were competent, polite, helpful and all the other things French people are not.
Vova – “The market enforces standards on Ryanair. People wouldn’t fly with an airline whose planes kept crashing, and I think Mr O’Leary is well aware of that.”
It is an interesting experiment in psychology and market forces to keep an eye on Asian airlines. To see how bad an airline can get before customers shun it. There have been more than a few lately that have been suspended by European air regulators before suffering any sort of money problems from lack of customers.
I assume that flying is so safe, and all other means of transport in places like Indonesia is so bad, that an airline would need a *lot* of crashes. Indonesia’s Garuda airlines for instance, was found guilty of murdering one of its passengers and then was banned from flying to Europe for almost a decade. Still flew in Indonesia with no problems.
Although Garuda does have its own budget carrier. I often wonder what that must be like. Anyone flown it?
Weird isn’t it?
The one social experiment that has been run more than any other, that of total State control, has been proven time and again to degrade lives and stultify the search for knowledge.
Time and again we have been shown that the State caters to the lowest common denominator, and if that proves to be a bit too high, well, it will forcibly lower the bar.
But still, here we have the I AM GOD merchant, who thinks that if he were in charge of everything, life would be paradise.
The only thing that Communists like The Big Dick has proved is that they build higher ladders and have bigger bowels, so that when you’re shat upon, you stay shat upon.
But isn’t flying an evil? And so to reduce this evil we must tax less.
Murphylogic
#1 – evidence, please
#2 – plausible. Airports are huge infrastructure projects.
#3 hmm, so how come car manufacturers design fantastically safe cars?
#4 laughable, unless he is talking about State employees
#5 tax promotes international stability? Is there nothing it cannot do?
Beware the man who writes paragraphs consisting of short, single nonsensical sentences.
I see from his blog that his argument has been handed back to him on a plate – so he has resorted to the usual ‘I know best’ remarks.
@Jack C
It wasn’t advertised, it wasn’t mentioned the holiday company, through whom my local agent booked the holiday, who spefically advised tourists to keep back €5 to tip the taxi-driver taking them to the airport. So i didn’t to pay it – *unless I wanted to get through passport contro to get on the plane home*
I can easily afford €10 or whatever it was but some Ryanair pasengers were students (at least they looked like it) who might not have had €120 to spare at the end of their only holiday of the year.
I expect that GlenDorran is right as usual. I seem to remember that when penalties for delayed train arrivals were introduced the scheduled arrival time on my (then regular, now occasional) commuter suddenly got three minutes later – all the increased journey time was between the last significant stop and the London terminus but on the return journey it didn’t take any longer to get from the London terminus to that station!
Too many typos to correct them all but the €10 should apply to the student as well as to me: I cannot imagine a student having €120 to spare. [I never took a foreign holiday when I was a student, in fact I never took a holiday away from home for six years when I was 17-22 apart from holiday jobs]
A flight from San José to London is about $490 return for the ticket itself. But when we add the taxes that Murphy is so fond of, it suddenly becomes $1300. He can fuck off and die in a fire.
“Because, for a start, without tax there would be no aircraft to fly.
Or airports to fly to.”
Thanx to tax I give you:
Castellon International Airport, Spain
Never heard of it? Probably because no passenger carrying airliner has ever used it. But it’s definitely there.
Paid for by taxes.
Murph’s not always wrong.
Edinburgh to Dublin may not be a good example, as there’s only Ryanair and Aer Lingus flying direct (via Travel Supermarket anyway). Ryanair is 5 mins quicker, and a lot cheaper.
Why is anyone still paying attention to this delusional fantasist and his crazed apostles? Carol Willcox is on the record as saying she will leave Labour and join the Communist Party of Great Britain, thus impicitly endorsing the murder of 100 million. Ivan Horrocks and Andrew Dickie continue to defend the record of Communism as ‘an unfortunate error’. For their part Murphy himself and Howard Reed deploy a fusillade of historical ignorance, ad hominem arguments in lieu of any intellectual ones, and both indulge in paranoid fantasies about ‘neoLiberals, ‘neofascists’ , ‘trolls’ and other fashionable non sequiturs that appear, in their tiny minds to remove the need to have any cogency or coherence to their arguments. What is to be gained by continued engagement with or giving the oxygen of publicity to these people?
@ Van_Patten
The Grauniad and the other lefty media provide all the oxygen they need. The lefty media depend on a Labour government for vast undeclared subsidies in order to pay their journalists. The tens of millions of public sector job adverts that *only* appeared in the Grauniad provided a very large income buit also meant that every individual who wanted a public sector job had to get hold of a copy of the Grauniad, thereby boosting sales and the rates that it could charge other advertisers. The BBC hates Margaret Thatcher because she tried to cut down the appalling amount of unjustified luxury, overspending and blatant waste.
We are paying attention because an unchallenged lie often get believed simply because it is unchallenged.
I think you’re all being too cynical. Taxation brought us Concorde. And the Brabazon. And the R101.
b(n)iS
Castellon had its first flight the other day. A couple of retired gents flew a helicopter there from 20 minutes away.
There is even talk of it having a scheduled flight (once a week I suppose). Great job creation scheme as I suppose it will have to be fully manned to comply with regulations. Good money after bad.
Hurrah for taxes, vain politicians and big government and central planning!
@SMFS. I flew Garuda budget from Jakarta to Bali last year. It seemed pretty much like any other budget airline to me.
As others have said, Ryanair is fine, as long as you know what you’re getting into.
I fly to Geneva Ryanair whenever I can because they are cheap, efficient and punctual (in my experience), but most of all bcause it’s only an hour or so.
I wouldn’t fly any further with them.
@bilbaoboy
Are you sure about that? This is Castellon/Benlloch, not the old airport on the coast. There’s nothing else there.
Although, to be fair, there’s not much around Castellon, either. Believe me. I’ve lived round there. I know. Half arsed little resort strip at Benicasim & that’s about it. Benlloch isn’t even near the Vallencia/Tarragona railroad, which puts Castellon about 50 minutes from Valencia & its airport.
Castellon area also seems to be distinguished by having the cheapest property in Spain. I recently sorted a Brit a flat rental a walk from the beach for twenty quid a week.
But that’s tax money at work. There’s a whole resort town laid out down near Almanara. Streets. Some of them dual carriageway. Neatly laid out car parks with the bay makings visible through the blown sand. Street-lights, roundabouts. Brit motorists’d cream themselves just looking at it. But hardly any buildings. Couple abandoned apartment blocks.
What investment of your tax €uros looks like when it really gets going.
TMB: “Icarus was a notorious tax-dodger, I expect, which is why his flight came to grief.”
Nah his dad who built the wings was a state contractor so even those wings were built on taxation… also it explains why they failed so miserably. 😉
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And God said, Let there be Tax.
“We could require that pilots and crew are employed by airlines, for example, or refuse them the right to land.”
I like that line – What is he suggesting? If they don’t follow his rules aircraft should be made to fly around until they run out of fuel and crash?