I can't help but thinking that FoE must have more important issues to talk about, but they instead choose to focus on trivia like this. Ok, so they can ram home the point about taxing the flight, rather than the passenger, which I think is well worthy of debate, but surely positioning flights would be excluded from such measures anyway?
What really bothers me is that virtually none of these groups, who claim to speak in the name of the environment, have given any kind of detailed thought to where all the APD is going. All they have done is whinge about it not being increased enough - as if doubling it was some kind of soft measure!
LHR must raise £1bn+ in APD each year. If I lived near Heathrow, I'd want to know where my portion of that was, and what Greedy Gordon was going to do to make my neighbourhood more liveable. Instead, all we get is more bleating. The aviation industry can hold itself up to scrutiny. Try asking anyone from FoE to explain their alleged £9bn aviation subsidy (unchanged despite APD rises), then let's have a debate about who's really hiding over these issues.