
Fury as airport drop-off charges cost MORE per minute than flight to Turkey - so are YOU paying through the nose?
Eleven out of 20 UK airports have increased 'kiss and fly' charges - typically levied for dropping off a passenger as close to a terminal as possible - since last summer.
Nine airports raised their fees by £1 - Belfast City, Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Gatwick, Heathrow, Liverpool John Lennon, Newcastle and Southampton.
Leeds Bradford and Glasgow both added 50p to their charges – while Cardiff introduced a £3 fee having previously had no charge, according to the RAC.
Luton had no kiss and fly area last summer because of a car park fire, but now charges £5.
Prices were frozen at Aberdeen, Belfast International, Bournemouth, East Midlands, Manchester and Stansted.
London City was the only UK airport analysed which allows free drop-offs outside its terminal.
On a cost-per-minute basis, the most expensive airports are Luton and Manchester, where drivers have to spend £5 to stop for just five minutes.
These £1-per-minute drop-off rates mean the cost of a return flight from Manchester to Turkey in August is cheaper on a per-minute basis.
This is based on a flight to Istanbul taking four hours and five minutes each way, with return tickets on a major carrier available for £415 return in economy, on August 9 to 23.
Flying from Luton to Istanbul on the same dates costs £275 return and takes four hours and ten minutes each way.
That makes the flight nearly double the price per minute of the five-minute drop off at Luton (55p versus £1).
The RAC also found there is no fee for dropping off at eight of the ten busiest EU airports, such as Paris Charles de Gaulle, Frankfurt, Rome, Barcelona and Madrid.
RAC senior policy officer Rod Dennis said this makes increases in fees at UK airports 'all the more depressing'.
He went on: 'The sky really does seem to be the limit when it comes to the amount drivers get charged for making the briefest of stops to let friends or loved ones out to catch a flight.'
Mr Dennis said the main reason passengers get dropped off at airports is because they have bulky luggage, which means taking public transport 'can be impractical'.
He acknowledged that many UK airports offer free options for dropping passengers off in car parks which require a walk or bus ride to the terminal.
But he claimed these areas are 'often well away from the terminal' and drivers wanting to help a passenger get to the terminal will 'often end up overstaying the free period'.
Mr Dennis also expressed concern over the growing trend of airports replacing on-site payment with a barrierless system requiring payment to be made online or by phone.
'Anyone who doesn't notice the change or simply forgets to pay will inevitably be stung with a very unwelcome parking charge notice,' he added.
Karen Dee, chief executive of trade body AirportsUK, said: 'All airports offer a free drop-off facility.
'They also have a wide variety of options to suit all passengers' needs, including premium drop-off in front of the terminal building for those who wish to use that.
'Where fees are charged, this helps airports manage and reduce congestion, noise, carbon emissions and air pollution for local communities, something that they are mandated to do by the Government and local authorities.
'These charges are a part of the airport business model and help enable the provision of the widest variety of flights from the airport.'
The top 20 airports were selected based on total passenger numbers reported to the Civil Aviation Authority for 2024 – with the figures based on nearest drop-off points to terminal buildings.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Independent
6 minutes ago
- The Independent
Doomed 105-year-old football club could go out of business in days
Morecambe Football Club faces imminent closure, with prospective buyers stating it will go out of business on Monday without immediate action. Panjab Warriors, the prospective buyers, have urged current owner Jason Whittingham to sign the deal to allow the takeover to proceed and save the club. The club's academy is set to cease operations by the end of the week, and the first team has already halted activities due to lapsed insurance. Morecambe's membership with the National League has been suspended, and the club remains under embargo ahead of the upcoming season. Panjab Warriors, supported by a minority shareholders action group, are ready to complete the acquisition to preserve the club's 105-year legacy.


The Guardian
9 minutes ago
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on Trump's tariffs: both a political and an economic threat
Donald Trump's 1 August tariffs deadline did what it was always intended to do. It kept the markets and the nations guessing amid last-minute uncertainty. It attempted to reassert the global heft of the United States economy to take on and master all comers. And it placed President Trump at the centre of the media story, where he always insists on being. In the event, there were some last-minute agreements struck this week, few of them fair or rational in trade terms, most of them motivated by the desire to generate some commercial order. Some conflicts are still in the balance. There were 11th-hour court challenges too, disputing the president's very right to play the trade war game in this way. Even now, no one, probably including Mr Trump himself, knows whether this is his administration's last word on US tariffs. Almost certainly not. That's because Mr Trump's love of tariffs is always more about the assertion of political clout rather than economic power. Mr Trump's antipathy towards the European Union drives one example. The pact agreed by Ursula von der Leyen in Scotland last weekend underlines that the EU's aspirations as a global economic superpower exceed its actual clout. The EU could not prevent Mr Trump making European goods 15% more expensive if they sell on US markets. Nor could it stop Mr Trump getting EU tariffs on US goods withdrawn. Equally eloquent about the global balance of economic power is that Mr Trump has not been able to force China to bend the knee in the manner of the EU. China has responded aggressively to Trump's tariff threats, retaliating with tariffs of its own and blocking the sale of commodities, including rare-earth minerals, that the US most covets. Unsurprisingly, this standoff has not produced one of Mr Trump's so-called deals. Friday's deadline has been reset for later in the month. It would be no surprise if it was eventually pushed back further. Mr Trump is not imposing tariffs on the rest of the world in order to promote global trade or even to boost the US economy. He is doing it, in part, because Congress has delegated this power to him, allowing the president to impose or waive tariffs at will. He uses this power for many purposes. These include raising government income without congressional oversight and also, because tariffs are regressive, shifting the tax burden away from the very rich, like Mr Trump himself, on to the middle and working class. But economics also comes way down the field in the list of reasons why Mr Trump is wielding the tariff weapon internationally. US talks with Brazil – with which the US runs a trade surplus, not a deficit – have been hijacked by Mr Trump's grievance over the prosecution of its former president Jair Bolsonaro for trying to overturn his 2022 election defeat. Talks with India are deadlocked because Mr Trump wants to penalise Delhi for buying energy and weapons from Russia. Those with Canada have been hit by Mr Trump's objections to Ottawa's plan to recognise Palestine. The ultimate test of the policy, however, will indeed be economic. For now, financial markets appear to have decided that Mr Trump's tariffs are manageable. If tariffs now raise the cost of goods on US high streets, slowing growth and feeding inflation, as they may, the wider market response could change quickly. In that event, the mood among American voters might even shift too. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.


The Guardian
14 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Is this tough US-EU trade deal a triumph for Brexit Britain? Only in leavers' most delusional fantasies
Those who misled the country over Brexit are usually quieter these days. They do not hang their heads in shame, but change the subject whenever they can. They deflect with their new war-cry that Britain must also leave the European convention on human rights. As the effects of their wicked Brexit folly worsen by the month, they rarely get a chance to whoop: 'We were right!' So their glee was unrestrained when the great US global bully gave Britain a less hard beating with a 10% tariff on its goods, compared with the EU, which was walloped with 15%. Their joy overflowed when the business and trade secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, conceded: 'I'm absolutely clear, this is a benefit of being out of the European Union, having our independent trade policy, absolutely no doubt about that.' But what else can a trade secretary, speaking through gritted teeth, actually say? In his attempts to attract foreign investment, he can hardly tell the truth about the damage done by leaving the EU. These advocates of Brexit should gloat while they can. When the French prime minister called the EU's deal with Donald Trump a 'soumission' (submission), Kwasi Kwarteng seized on the word in a piece for the Telegraph, writing: 'For the French, with their memories of capitulation to the Nazis in 1940, the word is even more associated with abject humiliation than it is in English.' Yes, that's the same Kwarteng who hurled the British economy over a cliff only three years ago. 'This trade deal is the EU's greatest humiliation since Britain voted to leave', read the headline on his column. But he would never confess that the difference between a 10% and 15% tariff with the US is minimal, since we trade twice as much with the EU as the US. It barely equates to the regular variation in exchange rates: in other words, it's 'a rounding error', the Centre for European Reform's trade expert, John Springford, told me, when compared with the hammer blow Britain gave itself with Brexit. The UK-India trade deal signed with the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, last week was greeted with another Brexiter whoop from the Conservative peer Daniel Hannan. Also writing in the Telegraph, he said: 'My party, and Brexiteers more widely, should be taking credit for having done what all the clever Europhiles have spent six years telling us was impossible. Instead of moaning, we should welcome Starmer's belated understanding that world's biggest and fastest-growing markets are outside the EU.' But the Tory leader took another view: 'Keir Starmer called this 'historic.' It's not historic, we've just been shafted!' Kemi Badenoch said, dismissing the India agreement as a bad deal that would increase immigration. I don't know whether clever men like Kwarteng and Hannan are blinded by Brexit monomania or paralysed by the awful knowledge of the damage they have inflicted on their country, unable to confess an act of treachery and delusion hardly matched in British history. But as ever, facts are too inconvenient for them to deal with. Yes, the India deal is the biggest and most substantial trade deal since leaving the EU. Yes, it's a deal that would have been impossible to do from inside the union. But how big is it? It will add 0.13% to our economy. That's better than the Australia agreement, worth just 0.08%, the New Zealand deal, worth 0.03%, or the proposed US agreement, worth 0.16%, according to Department for Business and Trade analysis. But our fragile economy needs all the help it can get, so hurrah for Brexit and our new trade deals! But the gloaters ignore the context: our great Brexit losses. Here's the Office for Budget Responsibility's assessment: 'Our forecasts have assumed that the volume of UK imports and exports will both be 15% lower than if we had remained in the EU.' That 15% loss in trade 'will lead to a 4% reduction in the potential productivity of the UK economy'. In other words, as Jonty Bloom of the New World calculates, we need 50 India trade deals to make up for Brexit, because Britain does more than 40% of its trade with the EU – more if you include the European Economic Area and Switzerland. India has just 2% of our trade. Brexiters bleat that Labour is sneaking us into the EU by the back door, with deals on Horizon, the EU's research and innovation funding programme; soon, hopefully, Erasmus; and maybe a youth experience scheme. We hope for agricultural products and energy deals. But even these, say the trade experts, are still small potatoes. Major attempts to rescue Britain's 4% loss in productivity since 2020 hit the concrete walls of Boris Johnson's monumentally bad trade and cooperation agreement. Brexit zealots protest against agreements to keep a dynamic alignment with EU standards that would make trade easier. But it doesn't apply to our internal environmental standards: outside EU rules, we have let our water quality fall behind the EU. More than 85% of bathing waters in the EU are rated excellent compared with just 64% in the UK, with the gap rising every year, reports the European Movement. Public opinion has shifted rapidly: we are now a 'Bregretful' country, where only 31% still think it was right to leave and 61% say Brexit has been more of a failure than a success. Who do they blame? The Conservatives and Boris Johnson are top of the list, with 88% and 84% respectively holding them responsible. More than two-thirds (67%) blame Nigel Farage. A majority of Britons (56%) want to rejoin the EU as the grim reaper carries off old Brexiters, replacing them with young, pro-European voters. Don't expect bolder moves from the Labour government in its current frame of mind. Though defence and security draw us towards ever closer union, public opinion is not to be trusted. If people were confronted now with actual re-entry terms – paying in, free movement, joining the euro, no special deals – their answers might change. The mood might also be different if the far right continues its gains in EU countries, dividing the union's values. What might it take to throw off the economic, political and psychological darkness of Brexit? A clever – or Cleverly? – new Tory leader daring to break with the past, confessing the error of Brexit and taking us back into the EU, once and for all. It may take another generation to recover. Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist