Rates

Air Passenger Duty 2026 vs 2027: 5 rules that set the bill

Most write-ups of Air Passenger Duty reproduce the rate table and stop. The table answers how much. It does not answer which rate, and in a corporate travel programme that is where the money actually moves — because which rate applies is decided by five rules, and three of them surprise people.

All five are published by HMRC and linked at the foot of this page. None of them is obscure. They are simply not in the table.

Rule 1 — the band is set by a capital city you may not be flying to

The destination band is not measured to your destination airport. GOV.UK sets it by distance from London to the destination’s capital city.

That is a real difference and not a technicality.

What it does to a North American itinerary

Because the measurement is to a capital rather than to an airport, HMRC publishes the bands as a list of countries rather than as a distance calculator. The United States appears on that list once, as “United States (including Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands)”, in Band B. So a flight to Boston and a flight to Los Angeles sit in the same band despite a difference of roughly two thousand miles between them, and no calculation on your side is required or wanted — you read the country off the list.

The list is not absolutely country-level: Russian Federation (east of the Urals) is listed separately, so a country can be split where the geography demands it. Band A is defined differently again — “Band ‘A’ is all destinations in the EU and EEA and also includes the following”, plus a named set of non-EU countries.

Why this matters when you are checking a quote

If somebody has estimated your duty by measuring distance from London to each destination airport, some of those estimates will be in the wrong band — because that is not how the band is set. The check is to read the destination country off the published list, not to compute anything. It is worth doing for two or three long-haul routes before accepting a modelled figure, particularly for countries whose capital is nowhere near their main business city.

The bands and rates are in the tables further down; the complete country list and every year’s rates since 2015 are on Air Passenger Duty rates. The wider cost picture — fee models, VAT and the lines that are not in the fee schedule — is on what corporate travel management costs.

Rule 2 — the reduced rate needs two things to be true, not one

This is the rule most often stated as “economy is cheaper”, which is close enough to be misleading.

The reduced rate applies:

For travel in the lowest class of travel available on the plane for seat pitches less than 1.016 metres (40 inches).

And the standard rate applies:

For travel in any other class of travel or where the seat pitch is more than 1.016 metres (40 inches).

Two conditions, not one

Read the first quote again: it is the lowest class of travel available on the plane and a seat pitch under 1.016 metres (40 inches). Both have to hold.

That produces two cases a travel policy written around cabin names will get wrong:

• A single-cabin aircraft with a generous pitch. If the only class available has a seat pitch over 1.016 metres (40 inches), the standard rate applies even though the traveller bought the cheapest — and only — seat on the aircraft.
• A “premium economy” that is the lowest class offered. If an operator sells no lower class on that aircraft and the pitch is under the threshold, the reduced rate can apply to a cabin your policy calls an upgrade.

What the policy line should actually say

Not “economy only”. The duty follows the class relative to what that aircraft offers, plus a physical measurement. A policy that names cabins is writing about fares; a policy that wants to control duty has to be written about the lowest class available on the operated aircraft.

The gap between the two rates is what a cabin decision is worth: £17 a passenger on Band A and £142 a passenger on Band B. On a long-haul programme of any size that is a larger number than most fee negotiations produce.

Rule 3 — a connected journey is charged once, not once per flight

This is the rule that most changes a corporate estimate, and it is the one most often missed.

A passenger who is on a connecting flight is exempt on the second or next flight of their journey

So a London–Amsterdam–Singapore itinerary is not two charges. The duty attaches at the start of the journey and the onward flight is exempt. A separate rule covers the case where the aircraft stops but the passenger stays on board:

A passenger on a plane that makes a stop en route but does not change planes is exempt for the leg of the journey immediately after the stop

Where a connection ends and two journeys begin

A return trip is two journeys, not a connection, so duty applies on each UK departure — which is why a UK domestic return carries it twice while a connecting long-haul outbound carries it once. If your travellers routinely route through a hub, an estimate built by counting flight segments will be too high, sometimes substantially.

The other exemptions, since they are rarely listed together

Most of that table will not touch a corporate programme. Two rows might: the connecting-flight exemption, which affects almost every long-haul itinerary that is not direct, and the Scottish Highlands and Islands exemption, which matters if you have sites there.

Rule 4 — the higher rate is a business-jet rule

The third column of the rate table is the one people skip, and then are alarmed by when they notice it.

For travel in planes of 20 tonnes or more equipped to carry fewer than 19 passengers.

Twenty tonnes or more, fitted for fewer than nineteen passengers. That is a description of business aviation, not of a small regional turboprop carrying a full load. If no part of your programme involves chartered or privately operated aircraft, the higher rate column is not yours and can be ignored. If any part of it does, the figures are large enough to model separately rather than fold into an average.

Rule 5 — the rates move on 1 April, and 2027 is already published

Air Passenger Duty is uprated annually. Both the current and the next set of rates are published, so there is nothing to forecast — only something to remember.

from 1 April 2026, per passenger per chargeable flight

from 1 April 2027

Direct long-haul flights departing Northern Ireland — Bands B and C — are charged at £0.

A three-year programme costed entirely on the from 1 April 2026 figures is understated from its second year. That is a five-minute fix in a model and it is skipped almost every time, usually because the duty line was folded into a blended fare figure where nobody can see it.

Who actually pays it

Not you, directly, and not your travel management company.

You must register and pay Air Passenger Duty if you operate a fixed wing plane from any UK airport that: weighs 5.7 tonnes or more [and] is fuelled by kerosene [and] carries passengers

The liable party is the aircraft operator, who registers and accounts for the duty and recovers it through the fare. APD reaches a corporate buyer already inside the ticket price.

If a supplier itemises an “APD fee”

Then that is a commercial charge the supplier has chosen to make and present separately. It is not a statutory pass-through in the sense of something the supplier is obliged to bill you for as a distinct line, and like any other line on a quote it is a thing to ask about rather than to accept as fixed. The same question applies to any charge labelled as a tax or a levy on a travel invoice: ask which statute imposes it and on whom.

This is the same instinct that makes the eleven comparison criteria end in a verification route rather than in a supplier’s answer.

What to do with this

Five things, none of which takes long:

1. Model years two and three on the from 1 April 2027 rates. They are published. Nothing here requires a forecast.
2. Separate the duty line from the fare line in whatever you compare. Duty is not negotiable, so leaving it inside a blended fare makes two proposals look more different than they are.
3. Check your long-haul bands against the capital-city rule, not against airport distance.
4. Rewrite any cabin policy that says “economy” to say what it means: the lowest class available on the operated aircraft.
5. Check whether your estimate counts segments or journeys. If it counts segments, connecting itineraries are overstated.

If you are about to run a tender, these belong in the commercial section alongside the fee model and the VAT treatment — all of which are in the free RFP and ITT template, and in the wider picture on business travel management.

One thing this page does not tell you: what happens after April 2027. Rates are set in Finance Acts and change with fiscal policy, so anything beyond the published figures is a forecast rather than a rate. The honest handling is to say so in the model rather than to extend the last known number flat and forget that you did.

All notes · Comparison criteria · RFP template