From Tuesday, users will notice a few changes to airportcharges.com, which we hope will make the site more accessible and easier to use.

The main change is in the way we display the validity dates for our airports. At the moment, we simply categorise airports by year, so charges look to be valid for, say, 2010, 2009 or 2008. However, with so many airports changing their charges in months other than January, a simple year identifier doesn’t reflect the true validity of many of the charges.

In order to improve the information, therefore, instead of just the year, the website will now show the valid-from month as well. For example, an airport that last changed its charges in April 2009 will display 04/2009 in the valid-from box, rather than just '2009'. As well as providing more accurate information, the change of display will also help users see when the next update is likely to happen.

We have also revised the look of the homepage, and on both the homepage and the Charges Data page we will include extra information on the scope of the website. We will now display the number of airports worldwide for which we have charges, the number of airports we have updated with new charges so far in 2010 (now over 600!), and the names and codes of new additions to the database. On the homepage, there will also be World and European maps to show the extent of the coverage we now have at airportcharges.com.