3 ms·

I'm not sure how that would help here. The costs of tickets would go up proportionally, but the incentives to run the ghost flights would still be there.

• civilized 3y ago
  It would make ghost flights more costly. This cost can't be recouped by increasing ticket prices because almost no one is on these flights, and it's unlikely that the few who take them will accept arbitrarily large fares.
  • phantom784 3y ago
    The ghost flight already loses money. It exists to enable the flight to Melbourne to exist - it is essentially an additional cost to run that flight. The increased cost would be passed on to the ticket prices of the Melbourne flight. The ghost flight would only be eliminated if the increased prices lower demand enough that the Melbourne flight (including the cost of running the ghost flight after it) becomes unprofitable.
    • civilized 3y ago
      From what I can see here, we agree that carbon pricing would make it harder to run ghost flights, it's just we can't be sure whether it would become impossible. That depends on the details. But going back to my OP, I'm not that interested in ghost flights per se. I'm interested in the unnecessary CO2 they emit, and even there, mainly as a symptom of the broader problem of an unregulated, untaxed externality. I think this is the real reason to care about ghost flights. Someone could also care about ghost flights out of aesthetic opposition to waste or regulatory arbitrage, but I'm not interested in that.