Originally Posted by
Midland Alpha9
Undoubtedly If the APD is to be devolved to Wales the Welsh government would do something about it given their hard efforts and commitment to get CWL commercially viable again and rightly so. As a country it should be allowed to decide the scale and cost of ADP as part of the the tax devolution powers transferred to the Welsh government in the past twelve months.
Whilst English airports may play ' THE LEVEL PLAYING FIELD ' card, with all the usual protectionished posturing the Welsh government has every right ,within European rules and competition law, to generate additional revenue for its own exchequer by attracting airlines and customers to use CWL.
The WG has fought for quite a while for APD to be devolved so they would do something, even if it's just cutting it by 25% or 50% or putting it on a sliding scale by the length of the flight.
As for the level playing field card, i have always found it interesting that airports the size of Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol see Cardiff as being either a worry or in their league as to lobby so hard against APD being devolved. If you look at CWL's growth lately, it's not effecting any of those airports growth at all and for MAN CWL's numbers are a drop in the ocean. Though of course what they don't want to admit is that the playing field is tipped vastly in their favour and they don't want that to change.