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This is mentioned near the end of the article but the reason those short domestic flights are so cheap in Europe is that commercial kerosene is currently tax ex
by simonsarris 5y ago
This is mentioned near the end of the article but the reason those short domestic flights are so cheap in Europe is that commercial kerosene is currently tax exempt in every single EU member state. Jet fuel is cheaper per gallon in the EU than it is in the USA! (or was, before the current war)
In typically tax-happy Europe this always struck me as odd, agree it is sad when you find out an airplane ticket is cheaper than a corresponding train.
- andy_ppp 5y ago“Follow the money…”
- KarlKemp 5y agoI believe this is a remnant of some complications with regards to taxation in an international context, similar to duty-free shopping. Another consideration may be the consequences of possibly diverging tax rates for kerosene: if it's much cheaper to fill up in, say, Spain, than it is in France, it might become cheaper to carry the fuel for the return leg, even if the increased weight increases fuel consumption. I'm not saying that any of this justifies the state of affairs. But it's possible to arrive at it even with mostly good intentions.
- PaywallBuster 5y agoas I remember, the discussion went that if EU implemented a tariff on on jet fuel companies would simply load their planes elsewhere, e.g. Russia/Dubai where there's abundant fuel with little to no tax not so relevant for the shorter trips intra-EU, but still a factor
- dkural 5y agoIt'll be more expensive to constantly fly back and forth to Dubai to load up than to simply pay the tax. Dubai is not that close to Paris. It takes about 7-8 hours. I don't know if you've been checking the news lately but Russia is out of the question for airplanes. They won't even return leased airplanes back anymore.
- aembleton 5y agoSwitzerland, Norway and the UK are much closer though.
- panick21_ 5y agoSwitzerland and Norway at least would very likely accept such rules and implement them as well. I'm Swiss and at least in Switzerland such a rule would automatically apply unless the population would do a referendum. And that would lead to a public vote that would almost certainty lose.
- megablast 5y agoMost flights are local. They aren’t going to russia for the Paris London flight.
- aembleton 5y agoNo need, UK isn't in the EU.
- verve_rat 5y agoIf they did do that then the EU could introduce a tariff on the fuel they import when they fly back in. There would be rules around a fuel flight vs a legit passenger/cargo service, assuming they don't want to tax the extra fuel left in a plane at the end of a flight. But that seem like a pretty straightforward problem to solve.
- hedora 5y agoMaking it even easier to implement: Commercial airline weights are carefully tracked for safety and efficiency purposes already, as are fuel levels. All the information needed to levy such a tax is already available.
- cinntaile 5y agoI bet this keeps a lot of national airlines afloat and they're already barely afloat, if they start taxing kerosene they'll require even more subsidies from their governments.
- thomasahle 5y agoThe point was that if train was cheaper than flying OP would fly less. Of course that means we'd have fewer airlines.
- cinntaile 5y agoThat wasn't really the point. He was surprised that this tax-free situation is not addressed and I just gave a (of many) reason why they might not want to change that. I think your new point is optimistic at best. You would have to switch trains quite often and the time it takes would probably weigh heavier than the price. Especially between EU countries, within country flying is not really that big in EU.
- thomasahle 5y agoI meant this > I love trains and take them over airplane when it's an option. However, trains are often around twice as expensive as flying for may routes. But I agree that switching trains is also an issue.
- saddlerustle 5y agoYes, but note usually around 30% of the ticket price of a european short-haul flight is already other taxes. This is compared to train tickets that include a 30%+ subsidy
- wasmitnetzen 5y agoAirports, especially smaller ones, are heavily subsidized in Europe.
- KennyBlanken 5y agoThe US airline industry is massively subsidized. Every country heavily subsidizes air travel. The federal government spends $2BN/year on Amtrak and people lose their damn minds. Meanwhile, at the FAA, nearly $12BN/year...and that doesn't account for all the local and state funds used to subsidize airports. Or Department of Transportation spending...
- TulliusCicero 5y agoHow does that subsidy look per trip, though?
- zdragnar 5y agoAmtrack moves just shy of 17 million passengers in a year. Airlines in the US do that in 8 days. That's works out to roughly 45x as many passengers, with only what, 6x the subsidies?
- pydry 5y agoThere's also intense competition among airlines which cuts costs to the bone. That doesnt happen for rail.
- jrockway 5y agoNot sure that's really true. Look at the low cost high speed carriers like Ouigo.
- WastingMyTime89 5y agoOuigo is a play by SNCF to avoid being undercut by a more aggressive low cost operator on the few profitable French lines. If you carefully look at their cost structure you will see that without the significant boost given to them by their parent company they would probably not be profitable.
- im3w1l 5y agoWith rail, the physical rail becomes an economic chokepoint. Who controls the rail came name his price. Now you might think that the same goes for airports, but often there are multiple viable choices. E.g. in the bay area you could use SF, Oakland or San Jose.
- petesergeant 5y agoI think this is probably the most accurate answer in this particular thread. There's essentially unlimited capacity in airspace, and while some airports are massively oversubscribed (LHR!) most are not. You can just keep putting planes up in the air in 3 dimensions where increasing the number of trains needs laying more excessively expensive physical infrastructure in 2 dimensions
- 6510 5y agojust 2 directions, beyond that you can (like with airlines) go bigger and more frequent. After that the proverbial landing strips become the bottle neck.
- hguant 5y agoThis is due to an international agreement post world war two (the 1944 Chicago Convention on Aviation) that agreed that fuel and maintenance parts necessary for _international air travel_ would be exempt from tarrifs and all taxes, barring a specific agreement between those to nations. Domestic use is taxed, and at rather steep rates (look at the US!); however, because most flights in the EU are international, it would require both nations ok'ing a tax on flights between them. No one has gone through with this, and it's doubtful any one ever will, for a variety of reasons.
- aembleton 5y agoI'm surprised that the EU hasn't passed a directive to set a tax rate for aviation fuel for flights between EU countries. I guess planes might just fill up their tanks in non EU countries and then carry the extra load around and be more polluting.
- DocTomoe 5y agoAll that does is neuter domestic airline hubs and give more money to the Gulf (Emirates, Etihad, ...) or America-based airlines, which is neither good for the economy nor for the environment.
- Gravityloss 5y agoYeah. A global tax would solve it. What about a really complicated solution, since a global solution is not going to happen: 1. Tax local fuel in EU. Everyone who fuels in European airports, must pay more 2. Tax European airliners fueling abroad - in countries that are not in the EU airline fuel tax agreement. 3. Tax inbound airliners according to the amount of fuel onboard This would probably violate all sorts of treaties, would be hard to enforce and would have lots of all kinds of leaks... but food for thought anyway.
- ant6n 5y agoHow would that work? Would people fly from Paris to Berlin via Dubai rather than take the train?
- flavius29663 5y agoYou're saying this like it's a bad thing, why? Why should we tax common goods and services to the point they become luxuries only some people can afford?
- ornornor 5y agoBecause of the externalities of flying, especially when compared to (electric) trains?
- hoseja 5y ago... are miniscule but public-facing, thus suffering from the paper straw problem.
- lorenzfx 5y agoSure, if you consider 3.5% of all green house gases miniscule. https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation
- ornornor 5y agoIt's not only GHG emissions, but also noise, resource use (all these single use plastic everything they give you on planes), land use...
- flavius29663 5y agoI am pretty sure land use for all those tracks, elevated rail beds, tunnels and bridges, stations is FAR higher than what the planes use. Single plastic usage is such a red herring...every time you load up your car with gas, you put in 15 gallons, that is ~50 kilograms. A plastic straw is 0.4 grams, 125,000 plastic straws to amount to the same hydrocarbon footprint. This is a very rough math, but you get the idea. You can compensate for all your life consumption of straws and forks by not filling up once. Plates are heavier, but still marginal compared to everything else. Another one: plastic grocery bags are 5 grams, that means one tank of gas is like 12000 grocery bags. You could say: but at least use less single use plastic! Have you considered the alternatives? Would stainless plates weigh much more on a plane, and induce a higher CO2? Would food non-wrapped in plastic spoil more? (We throw away about 50% of all fruits and vegetables anyway). GHG is a tough problem. Focusing on some token issues like plastic straws and plane travel for ordinary people does not solve it, it only makes it harder for people to accept it.
- missedthecue 5y agoA Boeing 737 consumes 2.28 L/100 km per seat. Fuel prices would have to go parabolic before airline tickets approached rail ticket prices (nevermind the time rail takes, even on the fastest routes)
- osobo 5y agoI'm fairly sure a mode of transportation that can carry thousands and doesn't fall out of the sky when something fails has other benefits, even if the fuel/passenger ration should be worse (which I doubt).
- polycaster 5y agoAccording to [1] a passenger train consumes about 2l per 100km per person. Whereas airtravel takes 4.9-5.9l per 100km for short ranges below 800km. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraftstoffverbrauch?wprov=sfti1 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraftstoffverbrauch?wprov=sfti...
- mrtksn 5y agoI checked it out and the number seems about right(like up to 2x but not too much). So, to beat an airplane on fuel efficiency you need to be at least 2 persons on an extremely fuel efficient small car. Surely, the actual costs calculations will need to include the infra and operational costs however if you check the energy consumption per passenger per distance[0], rail transport is always on the more efficient side of things. Unless the infrastructure and operational costs of trains are higher than airplanes, I don't see how airplanes can be more competitive. Is the rail infrastructure that much expensive? Maybe the argument can be made about convenience but on efficiency, trains look more efficient. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport
- xyzzyz 5y agoOkay, let's do the math. Consider a 2 hour flight, say Madrid -> Paris. A round trip is something like 140 eur. Boeing 737-800 burns something like 3000 liters of jet fuel/hour, and will typically carry something like 150 passengers. That's 40 liters per person. Jet fuel is really pricey now, something like 80 cents/liter. This means that fuel costs something like 30 eur per flight per passenger, so 60 eur in a round trip. Now imagine we slap a tax on jet fuel similar to the one on vehicle gasoline. This would mean that the price of jet fuel would go up by 50%. The round trip ticket Madrid - Paris now costs 170 eur instead of 140 eur. Would it make Madrid - Paris train route competitive? No, not at all. Truth is, you can make anything competitive with anything else if you put heavy enough finger on the scale, but the reason flights are much cheaper than trains, despite being faster, is not because of lack of jet fuel taxes.
- lorenzfx 5y agoAccording to this [1], taxes on gasoline are much higher than 40 cents/litre (50 cents in Spain, 68 cents in France). If you buy a train ticket in advance, you definitely are in that price scale. I looked up train rides one month in advance [2] and a ride from Madrid to Spain is now 175€ to 210€, right in the range of the train ride. But hopefully, Europe-wide CO2 taxes will start to price in externalities and remove the finger from the scale in favor of flights. [1] https://taxfoundation.org/gas-taxes-in-europe/ https://taxfoundation.org/gas-taxes-in-europe/ [2] https://www.raileurope.com/en/journey/madrid-paris-14skjpm https://www.raileurope.com/en/journey/madrid-paris-14skjpm
- einpoklum 4y agoThat ticket-in-advance thing is a part of the problem. For some unclear reason, some European countries let ticket prices skyrocket if you want to just go down to the train station and grab a train. How is this a good thing? And don't tell me it's important for planning loads: The schedules are mostly fixed anyway, and the usage doesn't fluctuate that wildly. In some countries, like the Netherlands, this is not a thing, and the national train (NS) behaves just like a city metro: You wave your pass walking on to the platform, and wave it again on the way out.