At Manchester of course where domestic transfer traffic is significant but international transfer traffic is modest 87% of passenger pay a level of APD. This anomaly raises even more questions and impacts on the wider issue of the clamour for additional runway capacity at Heathrow. Often held up as a bastion of UK economic activity, it's really difficult to see what contribution the 24m tfr passengers are actually making to the UK economy, hopefully they might buy a burger between the jog to a international connecting flight but far from actually contributing to the UK economy by spending money like the humble businessman, holidaymaker or tourist using Manchester, all they actually appear to be doing is clogging up Heathrow's runways.
So by logical extension, passengers embarking in MAN and travelling to a long haul destination via Dubai, Doha, Istanbul etc are adding absolutely nothing to the local economies in Turkey and the Middle East? It seems odd that so much investment has been made in these emerging economies in airport infrastructure and hub capability if there was no wider economic benefit beyond burger sales.
Come to think of it, the Dutch seem quite keen on the idea too.
And the Germans.
And the French.