The autumn budget is a great start, but making private jets pay their climate dues demands further action

Highly polluting and under taxed, private jets are a ripe target for policy to reduce emissions and combat inequality. The UK autumn budget’s Air Passenger Duty hike is an important first step, but more can and must be done to make sure heavy emitters can’t slip through the cracks. 

Beyond occasioning Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ barbed one-liner at former PM Rishi Sunak’s expense, the UK autumn budget’s Air Passenger Duty (APD) hike for private jets will have made climate campaigners prick their ears. The 50% tax hike on private jet-setters is a welcome, pro-climate move from a budget that otherwise spent little time on the planetary crisis. If handled properly, it could be the first step towards a more considered approach to flying from the UK government, setting a lead internationally. 

The autumn budget, private jets, and air passenger duty

Private jets now make up an incredible one in ten flights from UK airports, and growth since the pandemic has been far ahead of even the significant rebound in commercial flights. Private jet traffic levels, already rising rapidly post-2008 crisis, were less affected by the pandemic lockdowns than ordinary commercial flights, and since reopening have soared to an all-time high in 2022.

Historically linked to business travel, in recent years a growing share of private jet use is becoming pure luxury consumption. A detailed analysis of jet destinations from UK airports shows clear seasonal variations – Alpine visits hugely popular in the winter, the Med during the summer – which heavily imply holidaymaking, often for destinations that are easily reached on commercial flights or by train. It should be of little surprise that growing private jet use in general tracks so neatly with rising inequality of wealth, dipping only in the financial crisis year of 2008 and the pandemic itself.  

Source: Possible

Private jets’ climate impact and inequality

But the inequality runs deeper, too. Although a higher rate Air Passenger Duty was introduced for private jets in 2013, it has only been applied to the very largest private jets flying, with the majority only paying the same rate as commercial passengers, and some, very small, jets actually entirely exempt.  

But the carbon emissions per passenger in a private jet are significantly larger than the (already high) carbon emissions per passenger in an ordinary airliner. The result is that, when combined with the Air Passenger Duty due, private jet passengers typically face a far lower carbon price (price per unit emitted) than do ordinary air passengers. Figures from the think tank Possible show that an economy class passenger flying from London to New York faces an implied carbon price, via Air Passenger Duty, of £96 per tonne of CO2 equivalent. But a large private jet passenger faces only £24/tonne.  

APD was never designed as a carbon tax, and the Treasury still insists it shouldn’t be thought of like this. But clearly as the Duty currently operates, it’s creating perverse incentives and implicitly rewarding the most damaging behaviour. Per passenger, private jets are grossly more damaging than commercial flights: an economy passenger on that New York route generates about 1.9 tonnes of carbon; a private jet passenger, 14.2 tonnes, or close to ten times as much. 

The budget’s air passenger duty hike is just the first step 

So on that basis the deterrent effect, even if slight, of the APD increase is very welcome. It implies that same passenger flying from London to New York in their Gulfstream G550, one of the chunkier private jets out there, would now face a carbon price of £36/tonne – a distinct improvement, but still substantially less than everybody jammed into economy on a conventional flight. And of course this starts to make the mid-size jet look even more appealing, since its APD charge will only be going up by the same £12 increase as announced for standard commercial flights. 

The hike is welcome, then, as a potential first step towards recognising the real and uniquely large damage that private jets do. But the higher rate of APD needs to be extended to cover the smaller jets that make up the majority of take-offs from the UK: the government has today, also announced a consultation on doing just that, which is, again, to be welcomed.

Having taken this first initiative, the new government has the opportunity to shift our transport taxation system towards supporting both more sustainable choices, and greater equality. 

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