Airport drop off charges are because some people are disturbed
One of the decisions of the past that could be seen to have been in error is the closing of the asylums and the outsourcing of the necessary attention to Care in the Community. This possibly leading to some slipping through the net and so not being cared for but ending up deciding upon policy. Thus we get airport drop off charges.
One of the most frustrating things about the UK’s airport drop-off fees is that we are the only country in the world to have embraced these charges.
You can drive up to some of Europe’s biggest hubs – Amsterdam Schiphol, Madrid, Frankfurt and Paris Charles de Gaulle – without getting out your wallet.
While the drop-off fee had its roots in security concerns, Gatwick Airport says its decision to raise the charge by 43 per cent in 2026 is down to rising business rates.
A Gatwick spokesman added: “The increase in the drop-off charge will support wider efforts to encourage greater use of public transport, helping limit the number of cars and reduce congestion at the entrance to our terminals, alongside funding a number of sustainable transport initiatives, such as our £1m investment in new and enhanced Metrobus routes in 2025.”
This is not - thus our concern about that Care in the Community - the reason. Rather, those perhaps not fully up to speed with reality have gained a modicum of power in our political system.
One possible explanation is simply that airports are charging such fees simply because they can. This is also not the reason. The actual reason is as we have described before:
But, yes, these people are indeed actively mad.
Nick Stern warned us all about this too. Yes, doing something about climate change seems sensible. Get the externality into prices and leave markets to work the rest out. We have Air Passenger Duty on flights, we’re done there. We have fuel duty (trains might be electric or run on red diesel, buses pay full tax whack) so we’re done there. In fact, we’re done.
Stern also warned about having plans for everything. In language he didn’t quite use that would allow every pecksniff clipboard wielder in the nation to stick their oar in. Every Single Issue Fanatic would be insisting upon their particular, pecksniffian, part of the plan. As here of course. People whining about the use of fractions of litres of fuel to get to a form of transport that uses hundreds of litres an hour.
Gatwick Airport, specifically, has been told it can only have planning permission for the runway if it hits targets for passengers arriving not by private transport. From memory it’s 54%. This is, obviously, insane. But this is also the reason for these significant drop off charges. Because we’re not caring for the disturbed in nice and leafy Victoriana but have allowed them out and into the bureaucracy that rules our lives.
We should probably change that mistake.
Tim Worstall