APD tax dodging
I'm looking at a trip with ultimate destination of NEV at end of March to early April.
Through tickets there are a waste of time, but BA to SKB is workable. As a plane nerd, SXM is even better, then the local hop from there is easy.
So, looking at prices:
BA LGW - SKB £703
AF BHX - CDG - SXM £705
AF CDG - SXM (same flight) £480 + £100 or so to get there.
Now I'll be going just before APD goes up, and assuming they use great circle route and LHR as the yardstick, I make SXM 4083 miles, which would normally put it in band C.
For anyone who knows the area, SXM is quite a unique situation geographically, in being a tiny island that is divided between the Kingdom of the Netherlands and France, so CDG-SXM is technically a domestic flight (St Martin French side is part of department of Guadeloupe, as French as Northern Ireland is British, with a bit more water in between).
If so, should a through ticket not be taxed at the same rate as EU flights, as the capital of St Martin (French side) is technically Paris? PTP (Guadeloupe) is also taxed at the same rate.
If I was local tourist board, I'd be asking questions - although the response would probably be to stop being so pedantic. Except that there's lots of places losing out from this level of APD, not least ourselves, as the UK becomes much more expensive to fly into than other countries.
The tax is levied on the final destination, not first port of call. So will canny operators ever provide a dynamic service where the ticket is made up of two portions (UK-hub + hub - lh dest) and a handling fee for through checking bags? Or would all that be too much hassle to roll into a binding contract?
So, rather than paying the £120 or so extra it costs for a through ticket, I'll gladly make my own way to Paris, get a cheap hotel, and still be better off.
For a business traveller, this is all way too much trouble, but for anyone who sees extra stops as a bonus, this is well worth doing. How far can they get away with pushing APD before this becomes more wide spread, rather than a niche activity?