Air tickets will become more expensive

France’s Transport Minister says he wants to open the debate on the environmental and social cost of flights.

France will seek support from other EU nations for a minimum price on flights in an effort to cut the aviation sector’s carbon emissions. 

The country is aiming to “open the debate on the fair social and environmental price of a flight ticket,” according to Transport Minister Clément Beaune. 

“I think it’s a discussion we have to have at EU level.” 

But are more expensive flights the solution to reducing aviation’s carbon footprint?

Frequent flyers are disproportionately responsible for emissions

“Anything that makes airlines pay a fair share of the environmental cost that they create is a good thing”, says Jon Worth, travel expert and founder of Trains for Europe campaign.

“But we should be dealing with frequent flyers and this does not deal with them. It might reduce nice city weekends for some people but it’s not going to stop or reduce this regular flying elite.”

In France, 2 % of people take half of all flights, according to research published by the climate campaign group Possible. 15 % of Brits take 70 % of flights and 8 % of the Dutch take 42 %.

Overall, 37 % of Europeans have never travelled outside their own country, according to a 2014 European survey. Though this statistic doesn’t directly relate to air travel, it does give an idea of how many Europeans fly.

European train tickets are twice as expensive as flights

On average, European train tickets are twice as expensive as flights, according to a Greenpeace report from July. 

Only 12 train lines were found to be fast, reliable and cheaper than flights, over the 112 most important routes analysed by Greenpeace.

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Source: Euronews, 20.09.2023