Unfortunately, Carlisle Airport is in association with the hopeless hapless Loganair, whose online booking facility is about the most amateurish in the Western aviation industry. I've just spent a fruitless 45 minutes trying to make a CAX-SEN return booking for Mrs M and myself, exactly as I did last October. The website is a muddled mess in which links aren't where they're supposed to be and no thought is given to user friendliness: it is, in fact, amongst the most unintuitive IT shambles I've encountered anywhere.
Really? It seems no better or worse than any other airline website to be honest.
The topic isn't fully understood by the public at large (or so it seems to me, judging from conversations I've had with bemused friends and neighbours, all of whom are quick to assert that there's no tax to pay on top of the cost of railway tickets) and so long as it's misconstrued to be a nice little earner for HM Treasury, consumer antipathy is going to continue on. How much leeway Carlisle Airport itself has in regard to the APD level applicable, I don't know, but candidly, what with the "tax" ogre and the idiocy of Loganair's dysfunctional online booking facility, one would have to be an ultra optimist to see a longterm future for the airport.
Loganair present taxes and charges in the same way as everybody else in the industry. Clearly, like the rest of us, Carlisle Airport don't have much scope in what tax rates apply - they could try and argue for a dispensation like the Highlands and Islands airports but with a motorway and mainline railway station just down the road, it would be optimistic