The boss of British Airways has said Andy Burnham must cut taxes on Britain’s beleaguered airlines or risk seeing the industry stall.

As the aviation sector grapples with a renewed surge in oil prices, Sean Doyle called on the new Prime Minister to ease the burdens imposed by government.

At the same time, Doyle fired off a warning over a potential statist lurch to the Left as he highlighted the benefits that deregulation has brought to the sector.

Speaking at the Farnborough Air Show on Monday, Doyle said: ‘We have very, very high taxation – whether it’s APD (Air Passenger Duty), whether it’s airport charges.

‘And if you want this sector of the economy to continue to grow, to add to the core objective of growth, you’ve got to make sure that we reduce the taxation burden – because at the minute, it’s higher than most other markets that we operate in.’

He said his message to the new administration would be: ‘Recognise our value, and understand that we need to be competitive and think about that when you think about any policy decision that could erode our competitiveness.’

The comments come after Burnham threatened to reverse much of the legacy of Thatcherism in the 1980s – when deregulation and privatisation delivered a boost to companies such as BA.

Doyle said: ‘Actually, the legacy of what’s happened in the UK [is] we’ve got the third biggest aviation network in the world and we have more routes that are competed for than any other aviation market.

‘That’s as a result of having deregulated markets, having open access, and also as result of the innovation and the competitiveness of the players [in the industry].’

It came as airlines faced renewed uncertainty as the price of a barrel of Brent crude surged past $90 for the first time in more than a month amid renewed hostility in the Middle East.

That adds to the headache for airlines who earlier this year saw their costs spike as oil topped $100. A fragile ceasefire later saw prices fall back to pre-war levels but that now appears to have collapsed, stoking fresh volatility – and threatening higher prices for passengers.

Doyle said the situation was ‘not normal’.

‘You’re waking up every morning, you’re looking at the oil price, you’re looking at the headlines, you’re trying to figure out what the implications are,' he said.

‘We’ve got to… act in a very agile way.

‘We have a higher cost input with fuel – we’re going to have to navigate through that, but we do hedge and we take some of that risk away as well and that buys us time.

‘If you realise fuel is going to be $80 to $90, over time your pricing adjusts and the economics adjust and the industry responds and I think we’ll see that heading into winter, we’ll have to recover that input cost.’