The recent budget will push the APD to £80.00 per person over the age of 16 from April next, this for economy class, fast getting to point where it’s cheaper to fly to Dublin then pick up a US flight, far quicker if you factor in pre clearance, one only has to look at the volume of traffic through Dublin compared with the population.
Easy to see that without a premium front end or onward connections Norwegian decided to walk, the route in terms of numbers has been successful, but when you have to fork out £12800 just in APD alone for every outbound flight ( based on 160 adult passengers) it’s not viable.
APD should be scrapped for all airports outside of LHR & LGW, of course this is not HMRC in Westminster to blame as this is a devolved responsibility to the Scottish assembly.