Silverjet ceased trading today

[airbee]

A pity. I went to Newark with them once and they were V.V. Good.
I know EOS has gone in this sector; Maxjet too? Dont know.
Still think the concept was reasonable as a Biz model - one caveat tho'; One class, Luxury class is a good times only concept isnt it - tho prob fuel costs that did for them this time?
Painful thing - been thru it myself. Ah Well!

[TSR2]

The duty we pay on all fuel in the UK is way above almost everywhere else in the world. Interesting that under a Lbour government we pay up to 16% more tax than under any previos Tory government... including Maggie. I think Labour sold their soul to satan years ago. Shame, but I don't think they will be the last airline to suffer this fate. :-(

[cstorey]

There is no duty , or indeed VAT , on aviation fuel used for international flights . Thus the rise in fuel costs for aviation ( and for heating) as a result of the raw material price rises is in fact much greater in percentage terms than for UK motorists

[Chris Trott]

While there may be no duty or VAT, there is typically a bonding fee. This is because international regulations stipulate that the fuel which goes into a flight for international operations cannot go into any aircraft being used for domestic purposes. Basically, it means that the fuel going into an international flight, if removed for any reason cannot go into any other aircraft except that one or another from the same company flying a similar international flight. These fees are charged by the fueling company and are done as a "protection" as much as anything because if the fuel has to come off after going in, the fueling company may have to sit on a substantial amount of fuel for days, weeks, or even months (or even worse, dispose of it or transload it to be returned to the refinery for re-refining), so they charge sometimes up to 25% of the unit rate as that fee.

I only had to defuel a bonded airplane only once in my 2 years at Denver. It was a Virgin Atlantic 747-400 out of LAX that had to make a medical divert and we had to offload almost 40,000 pounds of fuel for them to be able to take off out of Denver again (they then had to stop again at Gander for fuel to make London which I'm sure made the passengers really happy). The tanker used for the defueling sat for 3 weeks before Virgin worked out a deal with British Airways for them to take the fuel on one of their scheduled DEN-LHR flights.