If you haven't booked with a travel agent and the airline goes bust, you are effectively left stranded abroad. Would you pay £1 extra on each flight to secure your passage home?
5 July 2005
The Association of Independent Tour Operators fears that travellers will be stranded if a schedule airline collapses and are fully behind the proposal put forward by the Civil Aviation Authority to impose the levy.
However British Airways have successfully lobbied the government not to go ahead with the inclusion of this in the Avation Bill read in the House of Commons last Monday. For now.
The general idea of the levy is that it would be imposed for around four years to build up a fund to be used as insurance. AITO say that this is preferable to a situation where consumers are "forced to pay again for a flight home for you and your family after an airline collapses with no right of redress".
This is especially pertinent the light of 15 airlines having gone bust in Europe in just two years.