As I mentioned in my column last month, we had been lobbying hard for remedy slots to be awarded to a single carrier and we are delighted to hear that these have now been awarded to Virgin Atlantic and we are looking forward to continuing to work closely with them during the introduction of their new services to Edinburgh and Aberdeen in March of next year. With Edinburgh and Aberdeen then offering competitive flights we will turn our attention and pressure to try and obtain the same for Heathrow to Glasgow .
The SPAA are involved in and attended the first Cross Party Aviation Group in the Scottish Parliament
at the end of last month where a full working agenda was created. The first action was to write to George Osborne regarding not only the reduction in the levels of APD but also to put pressure on the government to consider devolving APD to Scottish parliament. This was particularly relevant given that the brand new ‘York Aviation report’ had been published and a presentation had been given by Aberdeen, Glasgow & Edinburgh Airport . This new grouping consists of representatives from the 3 main Scottish Airports , SPAA , British Airways & Virgin Atlantic and stakeholders from industry from both the leisure and business sectors and we will be working on a number of other issues .
The SPAA is delighted to see another new flight being announced with the latest one being a summer service from Glasgow to Guernsey for a short summer season and this is on top of other recent announcements from Easyjet and jet2 holidays. We continue with our airline and leisure meetings to continue to work with our Associates and work in partnership on many issues
As the new ATOL regulations are in place, we are delighted to see positive comments coming regarding the potential inclusion of airlines as the next step which we have been working towards for some time and will keep the pressure up on this subject.
At the same time we are looking to make our input into the upcoming review of the EC Package Holidays Directive.
On the cruising front, in light of the latest raft of commission changes becoming effective from January 2013, we are now progressing with an Agenda to ensure that the cruise companies do indeed police anyone trying to undercut the level playing field together with lobbying to get any extras such as shore excursions commissionable and we will keep you updated on our progress
Finally, I look forward to seeing many of you at our Christmas Lunch on the 13th December at 29 Club which as usual will be very enjoyable and if you have not done so already please contact jhogarth@spaa.org to book your place.
KT / JH 23/11/12
No comments:
Post a Comment