Simon Calder

Simon Calder: Air Passenger Duty is still in a hopeless mess

The runway to hell is paved with good intentions. Look, here is what the Treasury said only this week about flying: "The Government was minded that aviation duty, as a per plane duty, should apply irrespective of the passengers carried." At last: recognition that an aircraft with only half its seats occupied has almost as much impact as a full one. I have been banging on for a decade about the need for tax to reflect the damage caused by aviation, by applying Air Passenger Duty (APD) to every seat whether or not it is occupied. Airlines would be incentivised to fill their planes, and flights which regularly flew with lots of empty seats would be grounded.

Inside Simon Calder

Simon Calder: Cuba as risky as Darfur? Don't make me laugh

Saturday, 22 November 2008

Travel, like life in general, requires judicious risk management, ranging from "Am I a strong enough swimmer to cope with those currents?" and "Should I really have that extra drink?" to "What countries are too dangerous to contemplate?"

Simon Calder: Child-free flights... and why not end free alcohol, too?

Saturday, 15 November 2008

Say what you like about Radio 2: it remains consistently the best listen of the BBC's national radio networks, not least the excellent Jeremy Vine programme on weekday lunchtimes. On Thursday, his 1pm debate was on the concept of child-free flights. It soon morphed into a tirade against inconsiderate flyers who recline their seats without regard to the passenger behind, nor their meal/drink/laptop. But the central question posed by Vine – "Could child-free flights be a popular and profitable venture?" – set me thinking about whether, and how, it would work.

Simon Calder: What went wrong at T5? MPs ask the questions

Saturday, 8 November 2008

A national calamity, embarrassment, or disaster? Take your pick: members of the Transport Select Committee used these terms and other unflattering terms to describe the debut of Heathrow Terminal 5 in March. The £4.3bn structure is now working well. But this week, much to the continuing chagrin of the owner BAA and sole tenant, British Airways, the dismal spring days of its botched opening were revisited by MPs.

We are rotten travellers, so BA staff are right to complain

Monday, 3 November 2008

Simon Calder: Thoughtless, untidy people whose civility evaporates with every fitful hour in flight.

Simon Calder: Smugglers beware: Customs are a law unto themselves

Saturday, 25 October 2008

To be aboard for another couple of international voyages, or not to be? That is the question travellers face on the ferry between Elsinore – home of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark – and the Swedish town of Helsingborg.

Simon Calder: Tickets as cheap as flip-flops – but flying fatigue has set in

Saturday, 18 October 2008

Six months is an age in aviation. In March, The Independent revealed that Britain's then-flourishing airlines planned no fewer than 100 new routes for the summer. They sought to capitalise on our apparently insatiable appetite for seeing the world, preferably on the cheap. Since the end of the Second World War, our desire to fly has shown a relentless upward trajectory, abetted in the past decade by the remarkable expansion in low-cost aviation.

Simon Calder: Sycophancy and scorn as the travel trade heads south

Saturday, 11 October 2008

Choosing street names is not the most challenging task on the municipal agenda in Spanish towns and cities. Saints, military heroes and nobility provide plenty of scope, as demonstrated by a sequence of plazas in the middle of Madrid named for San Miguel, Comandante Moreras and Isabel II.

Simon Calder: It's time to start acting like a bull in a travel shop

Saturday, 4 October 2008

Hamish McRae is not merely a fine ski writer; he is also the planet's leading financial commentator. So, a good chap to talk to in a crisis.

Simon Calder: Heathrow's T5 is working – but do we really need T6?

Saturday, 27 September 2008

Six months ago this morning, tens of thousands of passengers discovered what they had been assured would be "far and away the best airport experience in the whole of Europe" was, in fact, possibly the most expensive shambles in the world. The man who made that promise was Tony Douglas of BAA – or "formerly of BAA", as he and several senior colleagues should now be described – the man who built Heathrow Terminal 5. His customer, Willie Walsh of British Airways, was equally confident. "We're ready, so bring it on," he bragged a week before the opening of the £4.3bn facility. Even though field trials had been limited to a couple of thousand people like me pretending to be passengers, Walsh left no room for doubt that more than half of BA's Heathrow operations could be moved smoothly to the new building from day one.

Simon Calder: How XL's demise prompted flights of fancy by the media

Saturday, 20 September 2008

Stranded: a word that, over the past week, has acquired some interesting new meanings. Because I am presently stranded at my desk, unable to reach a real dictionary without getting out of my chair, let me see what my word processor offers: "aground, ashore, beached, grounded, marooned, wrecked". Yet, since the collapse eight days ago of the XL Leisure Group, certain sections of the media have used "stranded" to describe people who are on holiday. If a stranding merely involves sitting by the pool and ordering another cocktail, I'll be first in line to volunteer for the ordeal.

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