Cars, Trains and public transport by and large operate within national boarder, clearly aircraft do not, so trying to get a level playing field for these very different forms of transport is a non starter, if they tax aviation fuel in the UK, then airlines tanker in, increasing fuel burn and cost and Co2 emission's as a result, in other words the opposite of the intended ( if you believe that it's for green purposes that is )
APD is a dogs dinner, the previous government ramp up of duty in to the future was just a very lazy attempt to balance the books knowing that they were unlikely to have to answer for it from the opposition benches, that does not excuse the current administration, who will by the time of this Autumns review have been in charge for 18 months. It is set to rise to £12.00 a sector within the UK from November, i can't see any chance of this getting culled given the state of the Government finances.
We have a large and successful aviation industry in the UK from the likes of RR & Airbus right the way through to specialist support services, this creates and supports 100's of thousands of jobs, we should by now have had 5000+ people working on R3 at LHR, instead we are seeing services cut that provide important links to the regions from LHR as airlines and BAA seek to grow revenues by filling the place with 380,747, & 777, within a year its very likely that only BA will fly into LHR from anywhere in the UK mainland, there are far more services to AMS & CDG from the regions that there are to LHR, that the same applies to Dubai says it all.
It is not the job of Government to set tariff's of air taxes in international air space or where we should choose to fly to, but the banding system does just that and it discriminates against people on low or modest incomes, for whom a visit to Australia to see the grandchildren is beyond their reach.
APD should be set as a flat rate on all flights departing UK airspace at £10 irrespective of class of travel or destination and Scotland & Northern Ireland should be allowed to set their own rates in respect of travel to and from England (Wale's is irrelevant in this respect because it has few if any domestic service and PSO routes should be exempt) NI & Scotland should not have international charge rights ceded to them in order to avoid them manipulating the charges for gain over the England who subsidise both economies anyway, we don't want shafting twice!!