§ John ThursoTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport (1) if he will make a statement on the financial status of the Air Travel Trust Fund; which types of air tickets are covered by the Air Travel Trust Fund; and how many and what value of tickets were sold in each category in each year from 1997; [164645]
(2) what the current deficit of the Air Travel Trust Fund is at present as covered by the Government guaranteed overdraft facility; and how this is projected to change over the next few years. [164646]
§ Mr. McNultyThe Air Travel Trust Fund (ATTF) is currently £9.6 million in deficit but has overdraft facilities guaranteed by the Government. In the event of any failure passengers would not therefore lose out. It is not possible to predict how the deficit will change over 55W the next few years. As soon as parliamentary time permits, we will introduce a Bill to enable the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to levy a charge on the industry to eliminate the deficit and make provision for future calls on the fund.The Air Travel Organisers' Licensing (ATOL) scheme protects air travellers against insolvency of tour organisers. In the event of a company failure, the cost of refunds and repatriations is met by the bond, and if it is insufficient then ATTF provides the remaining funds required.
Companies holding ATOLs may sell any type of air ticket, but the CAA does not collect data on the type of ticket sold. In 2003 ATOL holders made 23 million sales of package holidays and flights on charter airlines without accommodation, and 5 million sales of flights on scheduled airlines, making a total of 28 million protected tickets.
The following table compares the number of ATOL protected tickets with total tickets for journeys originating in the UK.
UK originating return trips ATOL protected Total Million trips £ billion Million trips 1997 23.5 9.5 30.3 1998 25.0 10.4 34.3 1999 26.4 11.1 37.5 2000 28.0 12.4 41.4 2001 29.1 13.0 43.0 2002 27.9 12.9 44.0 20031 27.9 12.9 2_ 1Provisional 2Not available Source: CAA, ONS