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France bans short-haul flights to cut carbon emissions

• oatmeal1 3y ago
  It's not clear - does this apply to private planes as well? To cargo flights?
  • prottog 3y ago
    I've heard elsewhere that it does not apply to private flights.
    • George83728 3y ago
      Disappointing, but unsurprising, that politicians are hesitant to inconvenience themselves and their rich friends.
      • BrianHenryIE 3y ago
        Yes, when they introduced aviation fuel tax they similarly didn't inconvenience the rich. > Corporate jets to escape EU’s ‘green’ aviation fuel tax https://www.irishtimes.com/business/transport-and-tourism/corporate-jets-to-escape-eu-s-green-aviation-fuel-tax-1.4618545 https://www.irishtimes.com/business/transport-and-tourism/co...
  • dehrmann 3y ago
    I'd be surprised if this is an issue for cargo flights with how expensive air freight is.
  • some_random 3y ago
    I certainly hope it wouldn't apply to private planes, since a very common flight for them is taking off, flying around, and landing back at the same airport.
    • happymellon 3y ago
      I don't understand, why would they do that, and why shouldn't we ban them from contributing to global warming for wasting fuel. They are better ways for the ultra rich to blow their cash.
      • Symbiote 3y ago
        Surveying (agriculture, forestry, general land use) is the first example where this would be a reasonable flight.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • lxgr 3y ago
        GA is much more than business aviation (i.e. "private jets"/"ultra rich blowing their cash"). Just to name a few: Aerial photography (including checking for insulation leaks of heat/power co-generation pipelines), calibration flights for aviation infrastructure (ILS, localizers etc), training flights (or would you be fine with a commercial airline pilot to have their first training flight with you in the back?)...
        • George83728 3y ago
          So have they permitted these commercial/industrial flights while banning short-haul passenger flights for wealthy/business? Or are these industrial flights merely being used as cover to justify permitting rich people to fly themselves around short distances while the common man is forbidden? It's not as though legislatures are powerless to distinguish between these. If they haven't, it's because they've chosen not to.
          • lxgr 3y ago
            > It's not as though legislatures are powerless to distinguish between these. If they haven't, it's because they've chosen not to. Or because they've chosen to spend their limited resources on other, higher-impact policy changes first. Private jets account for something like 1% of carbon emissions of aviation. That's not nothing, but making it a top agenda item seems like populism more than anything.
  • slig 3y ago
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/01/private-jet-sales-likely-to-reach-highest-ever-level-this-year-report-says https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/01/private-jet-sa...
  • briantakita 3y ago
    Does it apply to military flights? Military aircraft & the logistics to support the aircraft has huge amounts of emissions. The manufacturing & effect of the ordinances they ultimately drop on targets (some of which are civilian) pollute the area as well. Storing Jet Fuel has resulted in pollution of aquifers. There are other means, such as diplomacy, to solve conflicts, btw.
• WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago
  https://www.sncf-reseau.com/fr/carte/carte-interactive-reseau-ferre-francais-0 https://www.sncf-reseau.com/fr/carte/carte-interactive-resea... They have a good alternative, another case of "portfolio diversification to be future proof" TGVs are pretty good!
  • justrealist 3y ago
    TGV is also incredibly expensive. Yes this cuts carbon emissions... but it's also just protectionism. There's a reason short-haul flights are popular. Somehow, insanely, rail is often more expensive.
    • deleted 3y ago
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    • cameronh90 3y ago
      It's not insane. Rail is just fundamentally more expensive for many routes. Short haul flight is typically run at a profit despite taxes, whereas intercity rail is run at a loss and subsidised. A big factor that affects costs both for running airliners and trains is turnaround time. Faster turnaround means more revenue per vehicle, pilot, etc. and planes are multiple times quicker than trains for most city pairs. Train infrastructure is also very expensive. It's costly to acquire the land and build suitable tracks, then the track maintenance is a very labour intensive task. Thousands of people are employed to inspect tracks, clear foliage, etc. Every city needs to be linked up to the rail network, whereas planes just go through the sky for free. Of course, you might argue tracks just need to be built once then they continue generating revenue for hundreds of years, which is true (maintenance aside), but as ridership increases and that track reaches capacity, the ticket pricing becomes a way of managing demand since typically building more track is cost prohibitive. With planes, if there is unserved demand, a new low cost carrier will spring up to handle it. Of course, if you were to factor in emissions fully, that could significantly tilt the tables in favour of rail.
    • crazygringo 3y ago
      I'm looking up the reasons why, and it seems quite complex. On the one hand, it does seem like aviation has unfair (?) advantages, in that there's no VAT on plane tickets and no tax on aviation fuel. But on the other hand, laying+maintaining railroad track (and acquiring the land) is quite expensive, while airplanes only need an airport built at either end. Plus train trips just take longer, leading to higher crew costs. And then airlines offset cheaper coach seats with expensive first-class, plus lots of upgrade fees, while the opportunities here are smaller for rail. Does protectionism also factor in to TGV? I can't find anything on that.
• ThorsBane 3y ago
  What about electric airplanes for short-haul flights?
  • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > What about electric airplanes for short-haul flights? These don’t yet exist. That said, Paris just took its industry out of the running for building that future. Setting a low- or zero-carbon threshold for these flights would have been a future-proof solution. (Or an exorbitant carbon tax, to align prices between trains and planes.) Altogether, this looks like protectionism in anticipation of the TGV’s upcoming expansion [1]. [1] https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/travel/article/tgv-m-france-rail-revolution/index.html https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/travel/article/tgv-m-france-rail-rev...
    • ThorsBane 3y ago
      Sounds like this isn't about carbon, then. It's about control. There are already electric aircraft either in the works or soon available that could handle short-haul flights all day long, but if they're interested in preventing this from even becoming possible that just speaks volumes to what their real intentions are.
      • standardUser 3y ago
        Saying something is "about control" is not an argument. The onus is on you to explain who is seizing this control and to what end, and with enough evidence and logical consistency that it's not just another of the million baseless conspiracy theories we're all sick of hearing about.
        • ThorsBane 3y ago
          It's blatantly clear who is seizing control and to what end. It's literally in the article headline and description. Some bureacrats are invoking a lie around carbon emissions to ground their population so that people can't fly anymore. Pretending otherwise or putting your head in the sand by pretending the onus is on someone else ain't it.
• jiehong 3y ago
  Shared car pooling and buses will probably be used more, like blabla car and flixbus as the cost is significantly lower than the train.
  • lxgr 3y ago
    That's true, but also pretty sad. Why not attempt to make trains more economical/affordable? Shared private cars can't be the answer to this.
• lxgr 3y ago
  I wonder what this will mean for short-haul connecting flights, especially for hub-and-spoke airlines. Theoretically, these could be replaced by better integration with the rail network, but practically, that's still a pain: Germany has a similar model, with some trains/operators even getting an IATA airline code and/or flight number assigned. Sounds great at first, but baggage isn't checked through to the destination, and passengers are liable for any missed connections unless they allow for a buffer of 3 or so hours (whereas flight connections can be as close as 30 minutes, depending on the airport layout, with the airline being liable for making it work if the connection doesn't work out). Until all of these issues are addressed (or the airline manages to switch to smaller aircraft) – are short-haul connection flights now just running half-empty because it's prohibited to sell the spare seats?
  • bluGill 3y ago
    I do a fair number of those flights - and as you say it is all because I live 4 hours drive from a major hub, and so I'm connecting anyway. If I want to go to the city where the hub is I'll just drive. (I live in the US so there is no train option) By the time I get to the airport an hour early, then get from the destination airport to where I'm going: driving and flying is about the same time, but by driving I have use of my car while I'm there. If I'm traveling with family driving is a lot cheaper as well.
• delroth 3y ago
  No, France didn't ban short-haul flights. France banned 34 daily flights on 6 routes (ORY <-> {LYS, NTE, BOD}), and those flights were already not operating since 2020. No domestic flights from the largest airport was banned (CDG), no flights to/from MRS or RNS, etc. This is because the law was pretty much designed to be useless. Flights are banned if you can make the trip by train within 2h30, with no changes, and with sufficient frequency and early/late enough trains to allow for an 8h day trip. Except that in the case of CDG they decided that it's not enough to be able to make the trip within 2h30 from Paris, you need to be able to do so from the TGV station at CDG airport. That's absurd, the vast majority of flights from CDG are from passengers in Paris, not passengers that start at CDG airport. Because of that, CDG-BOD is still OK even though it's 2h05 by train from Paris. And CDG-LYS is also still allowed because they considered that there aren't early enough trains leaving from CDG airport currently. It's basically just good PR with no teeth, and the journalists have been eating it up with zero fact checking.
  • nologic01 3y ago
    short-haul-washing
  • playingalong 3y ago
    I don't think it's only effect will be good PR. A likely (although not sure) consequence might be for other governments to pick it up. If not directly, then at least as putting some pressure. These who believe the governments work in a mostly reactive way should be happy. Here is something other govs can react to.
  • msoad 3y ago
    It's a good way of distracting people from what actually puts CO2 in the air. It's not airplanes or even cars for the most part. But hey, most people know about cars and airplanes so it is more relatable
    • sideshowb 3y ago
      Airplanes and cars are both huge contributors, though, and it's valid to discuss them
• epups 3y ago
  This seems unfair. These restrictions only affect a very specific group of people who may or may not contribute unfairly to global warming, while leaving people who have a crazy high footprint, like billionaires, unscathed. An apt comparison would be removing the possibility of driving by car between two cities that are served by bus.
  • josephcsible 3y ago
    > An apt comparison would be removing the possibility of driving by car between two cities that are served by bus. The problem with that comparison is that people have gone so insanely anti-car that a lot of them will think that's a good idea too!
• electroagenda 3y ago
  In the meantime, I guess Macron is using a private flight for going everywhere, short haul and long haul.
• rakoo 3y ago
  Don't fall for it: it's a marketing move, and no short-haul flights are actually banned. The law says that whenever there is a train alternative in the same city, and there are enough trains to spend 8 daylight hours and, come back, the plane must cede its place to the train. Let's take Paris-Bordeaux as an example. Because Paris has two airports (Orly and Roissy, beth not in Paris like everywhere in the world), alternatives in train are not analyzed from Paris but from the train stations at those airports, which absolutely no one uses as departure or arrival, like everywhere in the world. So the law now sees that Roissy->Bordeaux takes 3h44, which is higher than 2h30, so is still allowed... Even though the actual leg _everyone_ aoes is actually Paris Montparnasse -> Bordeaux, which _is_ less than 2h30. So the planes leaving from Orly are banned (which they already where, thanks to covid) but all planes from Roissy to Bordeaux, ie all the planes, are still allowed.
  • BrandoElFollito 3y ago
    What do you mean by "everywhere in the world"? MUC is 30 km away from the city, KRK is in a village next to the city, LHR is within "Greater London", Singapore Airport is 20 km away form the city, separated by a forest, etc. Lisbon's airport is indeed part of the city. So is London City or Gibraltar - but I wild day that they are exceptions. CDG and ORY are reasonably close to Paris to be called Paris airport. BVA is a stretch, it is called Paris-Beauvais but is actually in a different region, 120 km away from Paris. But the Paris Airports site does not refer to it.
    • rakoo 3y ago
      That's what I mean: it's not in the same city, it's in another one. For historical reasons of course, and it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it has to be taken into account: 30km can take a long time with public transportation, and the very existence of a special shuttle in many places is an additional proof, especially when said shuttle isn't exactly cheap. There are exceptions, and that is good, but it's that: exceptions.
      • BrandoElFollito 3y ago
• standardUser 3y ago
  Eurostar is one of the least carbon-producing methods of transport possible, and it's extremely convenient and pretty damn comfortable compared to planes. Yet on a recent trip, I spend at least double, if not triple the money on those train tickets as I would have for flights. Maybe banning certain air routes is a good idea, maybe not. But what is absolutely a good idea is making the already existing low carbon transit options affordable enough to out-compete airfare.
  • sebazzz 3y ago
    I might not even care about it being longer, but the price I do care about and also the number of transfers From Amsterdam to London is 99 euro with a plane. With the Eurostar at the date I wanted it was a transfer at Breda to Brussels and from Brussels to the Eurostar. And then it was 200 euro more expensive.
    • standardUser 3y ago
      Off-boarding these trains is extremely slow and annoying, so I could see how a transfer reduces the convenience considerably. I luckily didn't have any transfers over 2 round trips, and saved a lot of time and money not going to/from airports. But I'm still not sure it was worth the $200 more I also paid for each round trip compared to a cheap flight. And to someone who is more price sensitive, I think flying is a no-brainer.
      • DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
        The problem with Eurostar off-boarding is that they force everyone down one narrow platform, with only one exit.
• tomohawk 3y ago
  Did they ban non-commercial aircraft travel over those distances?