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Comment by gns24 | Hacker News Reader

The UK already taxes flights in a similar way. Whilst this does feel like progress, it would be much better to tax the fuel instead of the passengers. Virtually all other fuel is taxed, so it's strange that jet fuel is exempt. The problem with taxing passengers instead of fuel include:

- it doesn't encourage improving the efficiency of planes

- airlines can't fill their planes with really cheap seats, and empty seats seem like a ridiculous waste

- freight isn't taxed

If you tax fuel too much there's a risk that planes will fly in with enough fuel to fly out again, but that could be fixed by legislation or (better) by a standardised fuel tax across a large area.

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> Virtually all other fuel is taxed, so it's strange that jet fuel is exempt.

"Without any international agreement on taxing fuel, it is highly likely that moves to impose duty on international flights, either at a domestic or European level, would encourage ‘tankering’: carriers filling their aircraft as full as possible whenever they landed outside the EU to avoid paying tax. Clearly this would be entirely counterproductive. Aircraft would be travelling further than necessary to fill up in low-tax jurisdictions; in addition they would be burning up more fuel when carrying the extra weight of a full fuel tank."

This document explains it pretty well: http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN00523.pdf

You can tax fuel burned inside european airspace instead of fuel at rest once arrived at the airport.

Also :

>EU countries can end the decades-long exemption and tax kerosene on flights between them, according to legal experts. This could either be done at EU level through a series of bilateral agreements or by agreement between individual countries, the independent legal analysis for green NGO federation Transport & Environment (T&E) finds. The old argument that foreign carriers’ operating within the EU – de facto a small number of flights – can’t be taxed can be overcome by introducing a de minimis threshold below which fuel burn would not be taxed.

https://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/taxing-avi...

> You can tax fuel burned inside european airspace instead of fuel at rest once arrived at the airport.

That idea would work in trains; planes do not have tracks.

Planes are not on tracks but they have a position and they are either inside or outside a country's airspace.

They do have transponders, and EU airspace does have clearly defined boundaries.

https://www.flightradar24.com/

It tracks where the plane is, not where the fuel is burned. A few metres of difference, significant for border enforcement.

It seems like regulators could just tax planes based on how much fuel they leave with, regardless of the source?

A strong incentive to lift off with as little fuel as possible...

Meh, it's not stronger than the cost savings incentive they already have, and minimum amounts allowed are regulated by international treaty anyway.

That would incentivize planes to fly with as little fuel as possible. That could lead to some flights running out of fuel when unforeseen issues arise.

No matter how you tax the fuel, there are going to be some perverse incentives.

They're already incentivized to do that to keep weight down to reduce running costs.

ICAO already regulates the reserve amount of fuel required to be carried.

This isn't a valid argument

ICAO sets a minimum amount of reserve fuel, not a maximum, so this is not a valid counter-argument.

On the contrary:

1. Tax the fuel in a plane when it leaves the airport (i.e. including the fuel the plane imports). 2. Airlines will reduce to the amount of fuel planes leaving the EU fly with to dangerously low levels. 3. ICAO prohibits planes from flying with dangerously low levels.

Point 3 entirely deals with the problem of point 2.

It is highly inefficient to make an additional landing to fuel up. The tax would have to be obscene to make the numbers work out for an airline to tanker.

I don't think so.

Even a 20% fuel tax in the EU would probably make a few EU neighbour states lay down extra long runways so a plane can land, fuel up, and takeoff again, all without opening the doors or maneuvering/reversing. They could probably do 5 minutes with practice.

It would save $10k easily for a big plane.

You can make it time efficient, but not fuel efficient.

As well approaching and departing procedures add to the time, so you spend at least 30min on it. Add the diversion and you lose even more time. This would make only sense for very long flights.

Refueling with passengers on board has safety considerations as well.

> but not fuel efficient.

It's totally fuel efficient. You burn fuel coming down to land and taking off again, but you save more fuel by not having to carry the weight of fuel for your whole journey, but instead only enough fuel to get to the next stop off point.

You could make it time efficient if you designed an airport specifically for this purpose. No passenger terminal. No steps/trucks. Drive in/drive out fuel fill stations. No delay to land or landing slots (since the airport can be built in the middle of nowhere with super cheap land it needn't be runway constrained).

Some countries with high gasoline taxes situated next to countries with low gasoline taxes have anti-tankering laws for motorists (see Singapore vs Malaysia). That could be one solution.

It's illegal to tax fuel for international flights. Domestic fuel is already taxed but the Chicago Convention in 1944 set the ground rules for the ICAO and international air travel.

A possible alternative would be to tax carbon emissions

to the extent this is possible, this is probably the best solution, since emissions are not directly proportional to number of passengers or even fuel use.

Note also that it has only recently been established that water vapor emitted at cruising altitude has an unexpectedly long residence time and thus an unexpectedly high GWP, perhaps as much as the CO_2 emitted, thus doubling the impact over that same amount of fuel burnt at ground level.

Doesn’t it only cover fuel that is already on board when the plane lands ?

And the Chicago Convention seems to have been revised 8 times already (according to Wikipedia) so it’s not set in stone.

It covers fuel on board and fuel leaving the country.

My naive reading is that it prohibits double taxing (taxing fuel already purchased). Are you saying that when fuel my aircraft they ask the destination so they can gauge the tax?

Yep. I used to fuel planes, international flights have INTL EXEMPT on the fuel slip.

Don’t tax actual fuel, calculate the notice fuel use based on the type of aircraft and the distance flown (so 787 is cheaper than a 747, and a flight to Cairo is less than a flight to Bangkok)

Ideally you apply this across the whole EU at the same level

Good points. Just another tax that will be passed straight down to the consumer. Wonder why no wage growth for 10+ years? Will do nothing for the enviroment. "Better not go on that holiday because of the enviroment "

That's still a fine outcome. If it gets passed on to the consumer then people will take less flights, and hence, less jet fuel will be burned.

Passing the taxes down to the consumer is the whole point.

Hey, at least it's progressive. Higher income folks fly more.

The tax could be revenue neutral and achieve the same goal.

Also I don't see the connection with wage growth unless you are drawing some connection with employees of the tourism industry.

>that planes will fly in with enough fuel to fly out again

Planes with fuel are too heavy to land, planes have just enough fuel to get to destination. Landing with 40% fuel capacity would break wheels and damage planes, increase stopping distance.

> - airlines can't fill their planes with really cheap seats, and empty seats seem like a ridiculous waste

This has never been true. There is no money in Economy. Almost never has been.

Airlines make money off premium cabins and business travellers who book flights a couple of days in advance.

Example LHR to LAX return. https://i.imgur.com/SCjndu8.png

Fare: £50

One flexible First class return on the exact same flight comes with Fare of £15,628 and taxes of £670. This makes one Flexible First Class ticket worth to them more than the entire capacity of Economy cabin.

Personally, I wouldn't pay that with my own cash, but if I have to fly 6+ hours for leisure, I'm paying for non-flex Business/First class seats.

They couldn't care less how empty/full is the economy cabin. At £25 per leg revenue (not profit), I'd actually be surprised if they break even.

On long haul flights, airlines probably[citation needed] operate Economy cabin at a loss.

> On long haul flights, airlines probably[citation needed] operate Economy cabin at a loss.

Interesting, but why do they do it then? Wouldn't be better to use all that space for more first/ business class seats?

PR? Marketing?

And not really. I've never seen First/Business cabin that was more than 70% occupied. Though I'm a leisure traveller, taking roughly 3-4 return flights a year.

> There is no money in Economy.

Of course there is, there are entire airlines that only offer a single-class cabin. The whole LCC sector in Europe is based around the principle, as are Frontier and Spirit in the USA.

Now you can pay more for early-boarding or more cabin baggage or a flexi ticket but the hard product is the same.

> Fare: £50

Plus carrier surcharges.

They don't put economy seats in because they feel a duty to the traveling public. It's for money.

I thought the fuel tank had to be relatively empty in order to land.

And you are right.

Not for all models. The smaller ones (B737 or A320) can land fully fueled. For this reason they can't vent fuel for an emergency landing.

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