France has already banned domestic flights for journeys that are possible in less than two-and-a-half hours by train. The Dutch government is going ahead with plans to cap the number of flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport next year, pending EU approval, in a bid to reduce noise pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
We all want to reduce carbon emissions, whether on the ground or at 39,000ft, but Paris’s minimum pricing proposal is a bad idea for three reasons. First, it will penalise the less well off and be unlikely to reduce the number of flights. Those who take one or two flights a year to go on holiday with their family will still fly but find the cost onerous at a time when they are grappling with high inflation and mortgage rates. The well off will fly just as much as ever and absorb the cost. This, hopes Eddie Wilson, chief executive of Ryanair, will make the proposal “politically impossible” to introduce because “saying that poor people can’t travel generally doesn’t fly in France.”
Second, it risks damaging a hugely important industry. Research by the International Air Transport Association shows the overall European aviation industry is worth £800 billion and supports 13.5 million jobs. In Britain alone aviation supports 400,000 jobs. Ryanair closed its two-aircraft base at Brussels’ Zaventem Airport during last winter, blaming increased charges and taxes, after Belgium introduced a €10 tax per passenger on flights shorter than 500km, and a €2 levy per departing passenger on EU routes.
Third, anyone who remembers the bad old days of the 1970s will recall with horror what happens when prices are fixed. They only go one way. Up and up.