Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) recently called on the public’s attention to contact their MPs to dispute on the government’s intention to raise the Air Passenger Duty (APD) or widely known as flying poll tax starting 1 November.

Under the scheme, the amount of tax to be paid will depend on the length of time a passenger takes, which eventually makes huge difference on long haul flights. Consequently, the increase will have direct hit on families that have travel plans to Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, Asia and Australia.

As an example, a family of four travelling to Nigeria, Pakistan or to the US will pay £240 in taxes. For travels to Australia and South America, the figure will dramatically increase to £340. The APD for the said destinations last November were only at £40 per passenger.

The British government claims that APD is necessary. However, an estimated of £2.8 billion tax that goes to the Treasury’s assets were not used to benefit the environment, as it was supposedly planned.

Meanwhile, UK-based airlines will be joining the EU’s Emission Trading Scheme by 2012. ABTA was quoted to have said that it is a much fairer and efficient way to address environmental issues than the APD.