Hacker News Reader

Comment by doingtheiroming | Hacker News Reader

This is straightforward protection for Air France and the other big airlines. Cheap flights are used to make sure that seats are filled. Minimum pricing will mean more planes will fly with empty seats and therefore less efficiently. There will be fewer flights, but the ones that remain will be more expensive and more polluting on a per-seat basis. The wealthy will continue to pay and enjoy less crowded planes. Bonus!

Yet another case of the environmental Baptists providing cover for the polluting bootleggers.

View on HN

> There will be fewer flights, but the ones that remain will be more expensive and more polluting on a per-seat basis.

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.

The wealthy in Europe go by private jets. The upper middle class travels by business class (some of them fly via rented private jet too, if they have an expensive hobby, or if they're flying as part of work), and don't really care for the price either. It's the middle middle class who will be shafted once again.

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.

How wealthy can you actually be if things as basic as how much your transportation costs still worries you?

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.

Not private-jet wealthy, but solid upper middle class here. I regularly take a trip across Europe that is a 1h 50m flight. It is about 18h by train, with three transfers, four different operators. If I can't afford flying, I'll drive.

And that's from someone whose daily commute is a train.

If an increase in pricing will lower demand and lead to fewer flights, how will those fewer flights be more polluting on a per-seat basis?

Because the demand will be even lower than what the airline will offer?

I believe their logic would be to take the total emissions of a given flight and divide it by the number of passengers.

Yeah, so airlines would suddenly become unable to fill their planes AND unable to reduce the amount of flights or use smaller planes...?

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.

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

> There will be fewer flights

This is the only thing that matters for sustainability.

Exactly. If everyone took the plane to work, and every one of those flights were fully booked we'd have the best "CO2 per passenger" for airlines ever. And we'd kill the environment.

I'd rather have 10 flights per day with 1 person on each flight, than 20 full ones.

Which is better for the environment? 1 private jet or 1 Boeing 787? The per-passenger emissions are irrelevant, all that matters is total emissions.

It's not about optimizing per-seat pollution though, it's about optimizing total pollution.

If there's fewer flights, there's less pollution. If it's more pollution per seat or more expensive is besides the point.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com