Yup. That's easily fixed.

As I said after the Kingsnorth Six were acquitted:

A little tip for E.On: in future don't press criminal charges in cases like this. Take a straightforward civil case, in which case there are no criminal penalties, you just put in a claim for the costs of cleaning off graffiti and loss of earnings from having to shut down operations for a couple of days etc.

I was thus delighted to read this in The London Paper:

CLIMATE change protesters face being sued for more than £2m after admitting bringing chaos to Stansted Airport. Twenty-two demonstrators from the group Plane Stupid have been sentenced after pleading guilty to aggravated trespass in a demonstration on 8 December.

The protest, to highlight the impact of aviation on the environment, closed the airport for five hours and caused the cancellation of 57 Ryanair flights that were due to carry nearly 7,000 passengers. A further 52,000 passengers had their travel plans disrupted as later flights were also delayed.

Ryanair suffered £ 2m in costs and airport owner BAA is considering whether to claim back the losses by launching a civil action . Eighteen protesters have been ordered to complete community service orders of between 50 and 90 hours. Two have been given fines of £ 130 and £ 160, one was given a referral order, and another was handed a conditional discharge.

As ever, the criminal penalties were derisory, but in this case, that's not the point. Let's assume that the judge who hears the civil action lives in the real world (unlikely, but bear with me) and actually awards BAA £2 million damages plus costs. Great, there were about 50 protestors in total, so that's £40,000 each, which they probably won't be able to pay so either they'll go bankrupt (result!) or these Greenie organisations will have a whip round and pick up the tab (which is far more likely).

Then next time they try it, BAA will up the ante, on the basis that the 59,000 passengers ought to be compensated as well let's say £100 each for a wasted day, loss of holiday etc, that adds a princely £5.9 million to the claim. If the respondents wail and moan and claim they can't afford it (notwithstanding that this is not a mitigating factor), the claimants will just point out that the Greenies will do a whip round for them. So that's an award of £7.9 million plus 50% mark up for the shyster lawyers.

So the Greenies have a another whip round and some other bunch of cranks does it again. At the next civil action, BAA then demands exemplary damages on top, call it £10 million plus legal fees, the Greenie organisations have another whip round...

And so on, until an ever smaller number of Greenies gets sick and tired of stumping up ever larger amounts of cash for these protestors and one day a bunch of them really are made bankrupt.

All right, unlikely but possible.

Auctioning landing slots at Heathrow

Further to my recent post about local councils (those affected by the airport) charging for landing slots, I can now put some numbers on it.

In yesterday's City AM, it was mentioned that Continental had paid £100 million for four take-off and landing slots. Seeing as you need a 'pair' (one to take off and one to land), that's £25 million per pair that airlines are happy to pay. Assuming that Continental amortise this over ten years at the longest, that's £2.5 million per slot per year, divided by 365 days = £7,000 per take off.

The figures are all over the place; peak slots and slots to New York are of course worth more than early or late slots to Manchester, other figures quoted are 'Up to £20 million per pair'; '£30 million for seven or eight more daily flights'; £20 million or £30 million per slot pair. So let's go low, say £10 million for an average slot, amortised over 10 years divided by 365 days is about £3,000 per flight. Add on £30 per passenger average Air Passenger Duty x 300 passengers = £9,000, £3,000 plus £9,000 = £12,000.

We can ignore landings and assume that the charge is just for taking off. Airlines would still be profitable even if they were charged an average of £12,000* for each take off (Air Passenger Duty would be scrapped of course). Those airlines that have paid through the nose for slots would be spitting feathers, of course, but that's just tough. As the amount of noise and air pollution and strain on local infrastructure round the airport is much the same whether an aeroplane is flying to Manhattan or Manchester is neither here not there.

Heathrow has 471,000 aircraft movements a year, so call it 235,000 take-offs**. 235,000 x £12,000 = nearly £3 billion*** in totally non-distortionary tax each and every year to be spent on public transport, local infrastructure, sound insulation etc.

* Obviously, the exact rate would be set by auction. Airlines would submit sealed bids for how much they offer for how many slots, they would then be allocated in order of who offered most. Some airlines will collude, of course, but on the whole airlines hate each other, so there will always be some outsider prepared to offer that little bit more, just to rub BA's nose in it, if nothing else.

** Check: one take-off per minute, twelve hours a day for 365 days a year = 262,800, so seems about right.

*** Check: total APD receipts 2007-08 £2 bn, maybe £3bn is a tad on the high side for just our largest airport, but it can't be miles off.

"MPs call for BAA to be broken up"

Excellent, excellent.

Firstly because it's exactly what I recommended last week, and secondly it illustrates who's got whom over a barrel when domestic companies and assets are foreign-owned. If BAA were still owned by a UK-domiciled group, it would be able to exercise far more - in this case malign - influence over MPs to resist such a move.

"BAA to raise airport landing fees"

Obviously, the Tories made a big mistake when they sold off BAA as a job lot, any sensible government would break up this monopoly, which is of course inimical to free markets and competition, that's a no-brainer.

As to landing fees* generally, part of the MW manifesto is of course that the local councils should auction off landing/take-off slots and retain the proceeds themselves. As this is a user-charge rather than a tax, it would not impede workings of the free market unduly, while being a valuable source of revenue to balance out competing interests, in other words, the proceeds could be used to pay for extra sound insulation for local residents and for extra infrastructure like better transport links to and from airports. There is a natural upper limit to what councils can charge, of course, if they get too greedy, then 'planes will stop landing/taking off and receipts will fall.

A form of airborne Land Value Tax, if you will.

* It appears that landing fees are far too low anyway, as a 23.5% increase would only lead to a £2 increase in ticket prices. So we needn't worry about whether to charge VAT on fuel or international flights (a cornerstone of my tax policies is to scrap VAT); flat-rate landing/take-off fees would affect budget airlines (who cram their 'planes full - the Air Passenger Duty of average £15 per passenger would go of course) a lot less than more expensive airlines; flat-rate fees would make international flights cheaper relative to domestic flights, so people would be more likely to take the train for domestic but more wealthy international travellers would use the UK as a hub; the charge would be neutral between domestic and overseas airlines (who don't pay UK corporation tax); and so on and so forth. 

Better transport links to/from an airport have a huge influence on whether people want to fly from/to that particular airport, and better local infrastructure makes it relatively more attractive to live near an airport, so it would be easier for the airport to find people willing to work there, so if the rates were set correctly, and the proceeds invested sensibly, such user-charges would lead to a virtuous circle.

** For another take on all this, see here.

*** I have done some rough workings as to potential total receipts, based on grey market price of slots here.