Heathrow Airport cuts UK domestic aircraft landing fees again

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As of yesterday, Heathrow Airport has reduced the passenger service charge on UK domestic flights by a further £5. This follows an initial £10 reduction last January.

This is part of a series of moves by the airport to shore up support for the 3rd runway. By encouraging more domestic flights to the airport, the project can be seen as having UK-wide benefits.

The plan is to increase the number of UK destinations served from Heathrow to 14 from the current eight by 2025. To encourage this, Heathrow will be providing £10m to subsidise five new domestic routes, although this pot will be of little use to anyone except British Airways if airlines cannot also get well-timed slots.

The passenger service charge for a domestic flight (shown as ‘UB’ on the breakdown of your ticket price) is now £14.30 from Heathrow. This compares to £19.30 for a European flight and (according to ITA Matrix) a whopping £44.91 for an economy flight to New York.

Category

General

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Brusselsprout says:

3 Jan3 January 04:35

My Amex Accor Platinum status has now dropped to Gold. Did a few nights stay on it last year but nothing major
- James says:
  
  3 Jan3 January 06:48
  
  They don’t have a soft landing (in general) so had you done enough stays / nights to legitimately earn Gold ?
  Interesting.
- Gin and Tonic Please says:
  
  3 Jan3 January 07:49
  
  I also dropped to Gold, despite having spent only 1 night with Accor last year
Cheshire Pete says:

3 Jan3 January 05:04

My Accor downgraded to Gold on the 1st as shown in the mobile App. Not logged into the full site yet.
Stuart McIntyre says:

3 Jan3 January 05:41

Still showing as Platinum on web and mobile app, but with date of 12/2017. Fingers crossed that Accor take pity on us!
- Nicola walton says:
  
  3 Jan3 January 06:12
  
  Same for me!
  - Tom says:
    
    3 Jan3 January 07:51
    
    +1, and hoping it stays there.. have a Sofitel stay next month that the plat would be handy for!
SydneySwan says:

3 Jan3 January 05:45

Was Silver and still Silver – stayed 2 nights in 2017 but both were OTA bookings so non-qualifying.
Callum says:

3 Jan3 January 05:47

OT: Has anyone tried using someone else’s Clubcard Hotels.com vouchers, my family don’t use their clubcard points much and have said I can use them but I wasn’t sure if the names needed to match?
- Genghis says:
  
  3 Jan3 January 05:57
  
  You get a code to enter on hotels.com. Not tried myself but names shouldn’t need to match. I buy Uber credit from my clubcard account a lot for my wife.
Andrew says:

3 Jan3 January 06:00

I’m the same as you, Rob. On the full site, it says “Validity of your [plat] status: 31/12/17”, but validity of status points 31/12/18. Last year it took a few days to recalculate things as I remember, but who knows!!
- Genghis says:
  
  3 Jan3 January 06:04
  
  +1
Mikeact says:

3 Jan3 January 06:01

Will, or should, the reduced UK passenger charges be reflected in the ticket price ?
- Rob says:
  
  3 Jan3 January 09:07
  
  Flight pricing has nothing to do with costs, it is all yield management. The pricing team at BA have literally nothing to do with the purchasing / costing teams.
Andrew says:

3 Jan3 January 06:03

O/T as bits. My BAPP has been loaded with a BA offer today: 1,500 Avios with a £100 spend at BA (by 30 January, first 20,000 cardholders). Not a life changing amount but better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
- the real harry1 says:
  
  3 Jan3 January 06:41
  
  & guess who got Xmas hols 2018/19 tickets last night?! 🙂
  
  I went for the RFS option where you ‘buy’ 20,000 Avios for £160 so would have qualified – Raffles is covering this again this week istr
  
  anyway, not cancelling & re-booking
  
  got a 5th HBO fare & credit card fee would have been a less-eye-watering 80-odd pence, thanks to the credit card fee cap – still that’s 1% not 0.3% so what’s happening there? anyway, 80p is / would have been 80p & I try to ‘look after the pennies’…
  - Genghis says:
    
    3 Jan3 January 07:10
    
    🙂
    - the real harry1 says:
      
      3 Jan3 January 07:26
      
      I’ve got variant spend £100 get £15 back on my free/ Blue card – so thanks for the tip, should be able to use that for the return flights
    - Stu N says:
      
      3 Jan3 January 07:57
      
      Got £15 back version too – thanks for the tip, have a holiday balance to pay later this month so will definitely use this.
    - Pid says:
      
      3 Jan3 January 09:52
      
      £15 version on my BAPP. Thank you for highlighting!
  - Edd M says:
    
    3 Jan3 January 08:09
    
    Amazing I’ve got 1,500 Avios on £100 BA.com spend. Hopefully that’ll include car hire…..
    - Graham Walsh says:
      
      3 Jan3 January 10:04
      
      Got the £15 one on my blue card. Handy as I need to book two flights.
  - the real harry1 says:
    
    3 Jan3 January 12:39
    
    with my £15 discount and the 20,000 Avios for £160 deal, these Avios are going to cost me 0.725p/ point
- 1nfrequent says:
  
  3 Jan3 January 10:10
  
  Thanks for the tip, Andrew. Had it on my card too – handy as I am looking to book a trip this month to chase away the January blues.
  
  1F