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Comment by dewey | Hacker News Reader

Take-off and landing account for a lot more pollution than a flight in cruising altitude on long trips. That's why we usually talk about the problematic domestic flights where trains are an alternative. There's not really a good alternative for long haul flights.

Flights within Europe are not that heavily taxed, otherwise I wouldn't be able to fly Berlin - Brussels for 9 Euros.

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Wait, Berlin to Brussels for €9? Good lord, that is far too cheap. For example, the distance is roughly equivalent to Denver-Albuquerque. Kayak's cheapest quote is $119 one way, scheduled 1 month in advance. I knew flights in Europe were cheaper, but how is it possible to operate profitably at that price? Kayak shows $23 for Ryanair Berlin-Brussels.

For comparison, I had a vehicle breakdown and needed to take an (awful) bus that distance in the US, and it cost far more than $23 (IIRC, it was ~$75 and took 18 hours).

"How is it possible to operate profitably at that price?"

It isn't: Air Berlin, Monarch, Primera, Small Planet, Azur, Cobalt, VLM, PrivatAir, Icelandic carrier WOW.

They were run like traditional airlines, but traditional airlines can offset short haul losses with long haul profitability.

Primera and WOW were in trouble because they couldn't offset losses on their long-haul with anything.

I mean... I will not consider lower confort on transatlantic route, while sub 3 hour flights Ryanair is actually great.

Ryanair,which is pretty successful business, is essentially a flying kiosk. The tickets are cheap but you pay for everything else.We had a company trip from London to Ibiza. Throughout the entire flight stewardess hasn't managed to wheel out the trolley with drinks,because there was a constant queue of 10-15 people buying alcohol. An average pub on Friday night doesn't sell as many drinks as they did on that flight. They also make tons of money from car rental,hotel, insurance referrals and many other upsells. No one in his own mind would otherwise think that running a plane that costs tens of millions of dollars with tickets worth €9 can be profitable.

I pay more than 9€ to go from NJ to NY in a greyhound bus!!!

How is it so low? Even with all subsidies, kinda hard to believe

That's not exactly correct. Ryanair expect to make about $50 per passenger one way.

Though even at profitability, the flights in EU are typically cheaper.

Flights in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus are very expensive... They are in Europe as well.

9 euros isn’t the actual cost: it’s a loss leader for selling you other stuff for the flight. Also, that 9 euros doesn’t include taxes. Conversely, why are train tickets so expensive? Perhaps trains are overtaxed, or maybe less efficient?

Yes, the huge taxes are generally for international flights, and I think part of the reason is that, as you say, there aren't a lot of options for those flights so they have a captive market and are thus better able to bear those taxes. If you start with punitive taxes on domestic flights in the EU, it will disproportionately hit the airline industry there.

As with many things, the game with taxes is how to make the incidence of the tax fall more on the consumer and less on the producer. If you can accomplish that, then the tax is more likely to get through because unfortunately we don't have consumer lobbyists anywhere as strong as the business lobbyists.

Taxes always fall on the consumer. Businesses don’t pay tax.

https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/friedman_images/Collection...

That depends on the product being taxed. I learned this in econ101 that the price elasticity of demand determines who bears the bulk of a tax. I don’t have references in my old textbooks handy, but here is exactly the same concept as I learned it[1]

Basically, if demand for a product is inelastic (eg. cigarettes, insulin) that will pretty much be 100% passed on to customers by the business. You can see the supplied link for examples where the seller has no choice but to eat the tax (or most of it) or people will just stop purchasing.

[1] https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microec...

This doesn't explain why Norwegian are above to fly transatlantic for as low as $104 one-way (PVD-DUB on Feb 5th). I know that Providence airport likely charges lower fees, but it demonstrates how little "tax" is being paid on international flights.

Norwegian has been hemorrhaging money recently, because they can't compete with traditional airlines.

I used to be a great proponent of Norwegian... but now... They cost as much, with less flexibility.

My example literally demonstrates just how cheap they can be???

Because these are extremely subsidised. Besides that, those airlines use every dark pattern in the book, so most people end up paying significantly more.

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