The End of Cheap Europe Flights? France Proposes EU-Wide Minimum Price
forbes.com
forbes.com
Yet another case of the environmental Baptists providing cover for the polluting bootleggers.
So less polluting in total, which is at least one of the goals?
> The wealthy will continue to pay and enjoy less crowded planes.
If there are less planes available and flying is less practical, "the wealthy" might start considering taking a train instead. Trains are mentioned in the article so I think that's yet another goal.
I'm not sure what you're suggesting instead. This proposal is not perfect because nothing is.
Just observations of my circle of private flyers. This proposal is bullshit of the Eurocrat variety, since it's meant to put all the blame on the middle class, instead of on the former.
France could have proposed shifting all the EU entities in Strasbourg to Brussels, which will have an immediate positive environmental impact. But obviously the canards in the French govt and the EU won't.
The wealthy will continue to flit around on private jets, large SUVs, super cars, or even yachts if they are considering taking the trip slowly.
And that's from someone whose daily commute is a train.
Because the demand will be even lower than what the airline will offer?
All these are characteristics of aviation already today. It'll be hard to find a business model as ruthless in terms of customer-commitment than aviation.
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So if the concern is that airlines will be unable to adapt to less business, I'd say: Let's find out.
Oh. And let's remove the tax-exemption of Aviation fuel
This is the only thing that matters for sustainability.
I'd rather have 10 flights per day with 1 person on each flight, than 20 full ones.
If there's fewer flights, there's less pollution. If it's more pollution per seat or more expensive is besides the point.
It's ridiculous how the market is artificially skewed in favor of aviation, while (most of) the same EU member states struggle to compete with their OWN train service...
I'd say the EU should tax the fuel for flights within EU and pump the money into a connected (and centrally bookable!) railway-network.
But maybe this time price controls will be different.
Strange market logic. Normally you lower the prices to increase demand and fill those empty seats. Raising prices will only make more seats go empty.
I wouldn't expect i.e. these 2% (!) of people in France who make up 50% (!) of all trips to change their traveling habits just because the minimum price was raised. They likely pay significantly more on traveling each month already.
Sounds like a commercial aviation fuel tax would be more effective, with those 2% of people then paying 50% of all aviation fuel, instead of lower-income occasional travelers randomly paying more...
You do, however, also have 98% of people doing the other 50% of trips. There's a good chance some of those 98% do care about the cost and might not fly if the cost is higher, e.g. you might decrease the number of trips taken.
I believe it will raise a bit prices in 2026 but not too much.
As a side-effect, I’m wishfully dreaming that trains will become cheaper and make more attractive against short-haul flights.
(A similar approach is also taking hold for home heating and EV charging, no point taxing something you are trying to encourage and that will then cost you more money elsewhere)
I'm interested in what kind of minimum price they want to set, as I really like how cheap it is to fly around Europe.
Minimum prices just cut off the low end of the market, and seems obviously designed to protect the big/more-expensive players and their wealthier customers.
One of France's neighbours taxes petrol sales at 65c/l, not the percentage you might be thinking of as tax. It was done that way because a flat tax fit the political purpose of the tax.
So what's the political purpose? I'd guess that the goal is to reduce the difference between the apparent very low price of flights and the average price actually charged by the airlines, so that flying won't seem so cheap. Ie. the goal of the initiative is to correct a false impression of the price of flying, which is not a matter of economics at all and not something economics can sort out.
The average actual price is the average of the total price paid, which is not just the first few seats per plane, and which also includes all those taxes and extras.
If people make travel decisions before buying the tickets (as they're almost forced to), then some/many of them will base the decision of how to travel on the word-of-mouth price they've already heard rather than on the price they'll see at the end of the purchase process.
None of the environmental people on here are taking into account any benefit from these flights and none of the economics minded people have done a good job explaining why this is a bad idea, so here it goes:
The correct answer, as always is to price pollution properly with a carbon tax or cap and trade because then the most efficient providers can kill off the less efficient and provide more per the same unit of pollution. They don't want to do this because that inefficient provider is air france and the air france equivalents and those are sacred cows. A tax or cap and trade would also apply to other inefficient pseudo government sacred cows like state owned energy companies, etc. By putting in a minimum price on a narrow set of polluters they can then target stuff they don't like rather than preferentially hurt the worst offenders (which are often the government!) And they can make us all much poorer by artificially limiting consumer choice (which should never be the goal of pollution regulation. The goal of pollution regulation should be to limit pollution to an acceptable amount while maximizing benefit to consumers and the best, cheapest, easiest way for that to happen is by pricing the pollutant and letting consumers tell us what they want through their purchases at the new price. Its pretty much never achieved by government mandate because government cannot know your personal preferences across all of society.
I hope they tax planes more and use that money to subsidize rail.
That sounds like a good plan. I don't think lobbying will let us, though.
Trying to directly cap emissions seems like a good way to make the program fail before it even starts. Do you penalize fliers who end up on an older, less efficient jet? Takeoffs burn a lot of fuel so do you penalize fliers who take flights with a layover? If a plane flies half-full, do the passengers pay more?
Capping and trading is the more simple solution. Instead of putting various restrictions and limits on a ad hoc basis (often influenced by lobbyists and special interest groups) for dozens and dozens of activities, you have just one unified system.
I also think it would be an easier thing to sell politically. Most people don't fly every year and giving them an easy way to turn their lack of travel into a small bonus is appealing.
A cap-and-trade program has the double whammy of being a tax / regulation and pro-environment. Two things the right and much of the center are going to say "no" to.
It seems like a practical implementation of a bonus-malus system.
When was the last time you’ve taken a train in Italy? There’s an impressive high-speed network these days.
Banning flights where an equivalent 2.5hour train journey exists sounds good, but might the train lines then ramp up the price if there no alternative flight?
Trains aren't an alternative, especially when they take double the time a normal airplane would.
If trains took double (or even 3 times) what an airplane took they would definitely be an alternative. Given the choice between a 1-2 hour flight and a 3-5 hour train ride, I virtually always choose the train. Especially since the train drops me in the centre of the city I'm going to
The problem is they often take 10+ times what the airplane takes. From where I live to Paris or Zurich is either a 2 hour direct flight from the airport 30 minutes down the road or literally 20+ hours and 5-8 transfers by train.
I don't think I needed that many transfers to travel by train from Shanghai to London.
You are making better time by train, unless your actual destination was Zurich's airport instead of Zurich.