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.
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
After electricity and heating transportation is, by a considerable margin, the second largest source of emissions. And as the article points out, on a per capita basis domestic flights and single person car usage are several times more emission heavy than other modes of transport. So this is certainly one of the most important sectors to tackle.
it's not misleading at all. Not only are those two methods of transportation also the largest in absolute terms. Per Capita costs are what matters because that indicates the efficiency of that particular mode of transportation. we definitely should measure concrete usage that way. If country A houses ten times more people with the same amount of concrete as country B, A is vastly more environmentally friendly.
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.
> 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.
Doing so would ban connecting flights.
Imagine instead of just going to the connecting terminal if you had to leave the airport, grab all your stuff, go into a local train, then to the train-station...
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.
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.
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.
What matters is not whether they are inside or outside the city, it's that they are always far away from the center (where people actually want to go) so taking the actual location of the airport isn't a proper way to represent the real travel
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Sure, as are German ICEs, but are they a good replacement for connecting flights? In my experience, taking a long-distance high-speed train to catch a flight can be pretty stressful/risky.
I suspect that a large portion of domestic flights in Germany, France, Italy, and other countries with a well-established rail network are used for just that.
> It works when the high-speed trains stop directly at the airport, and when the trains are reliable.
That's not nearly enough. Airlines would need to figure out a way to actually integrate trains into their systems, including ticketing, baggage check-through, automated re-ticketing in case of delays/missed connections, liability of missed trains (including getting passengers a hotel and meals), and so much more.
This is the value that connecting flights provide that the "train + plane" combination falls quite short of today: A binding contract making it the operator's responsibility to get you from A to B.
Ticket integration would make life easier (note that it already exists in some places, such as Germany: [0]).
However, in places where trains are reliable and frequent (such as Japan and China), you don't really have to worry about missed connections.
Baggage getting checked through is a luxury, in my opinion, although it should be noted that this service exists in some places as well (in Switzerland, you can get your luggage checked through from your inbound flight to any train station, or from any station to your outbound flight: [1]).
TIL, thank you! That's indeed pretty neat and wasn't available the last time I used the "AIRail" predecessor:
> Should there be a delay, our transfer guarantee means that you will be rebooked automatically onto the next flight or train – we will notify you of this in good time.
I wonder which EU passenger rights will apply to this, though: There's different sets of rules for rail and air.
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.
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.
> airlines offset cheaper coach seats with expensive first-class, plus lots of upgrade fees, while the opportunities here are smaller for rail
The opportunities for first-class train cars are enormous and precedented. Rail requiring subsidies just makes it politically unpalatable.
(The solution is to let private cars hook up to public trains for a fee. Imagine the Caltrain having a Google car instead of a Google bus on the road. Or the Four Seasons operating a fleet of luxury Amtrak cars.)
You generally can't add an extra coach to a high speed train. They are fixed in formations of 4-9 or so coaches, sometimes with one set of wheels shared between two coaches. It is more aerodynamic and safer.
You can in theory couple two whole sets together, but in practice you can't do this either because you need to rebuild all the stations along the way so the platforms are longer. You often can't even build only the busy stations bigger and seat people going to smaller stations on the one car that stops as the train will hang out of the station onto track and so some other train not stopping can't get by it.
Amtrak says they became more reliable when the stopped allowing private cars to hookup. (or they would be? I don't recall exactly what I read) Many people who own private cars have not kept up on maintenance, and if your private car breaks down the whole train stops.
Amtrack is so incompetently run that I would not take any statement like this at face value — what they are saying is that it's annoying tot think about and they don't want to allow it.
(also, it allows them to offload some of their own unreliability onto someone else).
> Plus train trips just take longer, leading to higher crew costs.
I assume you're only talking about time onboard, not door-to-door time (where high-speed rail generally beats short-haul flights), so I won't dispute the time aspect.
But in order to calculate crew costs, you'd have to know crew density, and my impression is that crew/passengers is several times higher for planes than trains.
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.
Private planes and flights are a _much_ bigger world than private jets for the ultra rich. Many moderately wealthy (and some surprisingly poor) people fly regularly, either for work or for fun, and many of those flights are either beneficial to society or no worse than other recreational activities. Some examples of flights that would start and end at the same airport:
* Farmers flying to review and maintain their fields/livestock
* Pilots practicing by taking off, flying around, touch-and-gos on the runway, etc
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?)...
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.
> 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.
Nah you don't get to decide if someone flies their craft purely for enjoyment. Doesn't matter if it "contributes" to global warming. It's not a needle mover at all and this is just about control. It's a slippery slope. I will not tolerate this slippery slope at all. These bureacrats will just have to be satisfied with enacting real meaningful changes where they matter - not on regulating people's free choice and free exercise and how easily and quickly they can move around their homeland via electric planes.
This is all one big slippery slope towards tyrants regulating every aspect of an individual's life in the name of carbon emissions. You don't get to decide what flights are a waste of fuel. You also don't get to evaluate and decide how someone else should spend their hard-earned money.
If there were no more flights at all, of any kind, that would represent 4% of emissions. That's for the entire planet's worth of flights. This change here won't make any difference at all to emissions, but they'll definitely empower bureacrats who are salivating at every prospect of making themselves more powerful at everyone else's expense.
you can split the 100% of total emissions into 25 pieces, apply your impeccable "logic" for freedom of choice to spend hard-earned money (somehow its never ill-gotten money) on all of them and burn the planet to your ideological satisfaction.
the only slippery slope here is the normalization of the "do-nothing because it inconveniences me" mentality.
your freedom of action ends where it conflicts with the collective survival and that is i) not a new thing and ii) is not negotiable.
the details of what to change and how are up for discussion and critique, but talk of "tyrants" and "salivating bureaucrats" indicates you will not be the one contributing anything meaningful to the discussion
Deaths from climate-related disasters have been falling in absolute numbers even as the world population grows. In fact, in the 50 years from 1970 to 2019, humanity more than doubled in number while climate-related deaths decreased threefold. This is due to the increasing ability of people in developing countries to better harness and control their natural environment enabled by industrialization driven by fossil fuels.
All of human progress has been about higher per capita energy expenditure. To stop that now is to condemn the global poor to remain in poverty. We'll know for sure in another fifty to a hundred years, but my bet is that the bigger threat to humanity's collective survival will be from the increasing centralization of power at the hands of the few that things like "fighting climate change" require.
its funny how the "global poor" enter a discussion about whether or not to allow short-haul flights (and private jets) in the developed world, largely discretionary consumption choices that have workable and less-polluting substitutes
measuring the impact of the fossil-fuel induced climate change as some direct death count is incredibly short-sighted if not amoral. large parts of the world already show significant impact from desertification. people in severely stressed areas will move, peacefully or forcefully. the result will be (civil) wars and mass migration and we already see this in the middle east. the entire modern political system of countries and borders is predicated on stable climate conditions.
> centralization of power at the hands of the few
that's a red herring if there ever was one. why should the sustainability transition be performed via centralized tyranny? If people stop spreading misinformation at the behest of vested interests and we develop reliable measures of environmental impacts a democratic society is perfectly capable to make the rational choices
> largely discretionary consumption choices that have workable and less-polluting substitutes
You don't get to decide what is discretionary consumption. No hall monitor will ever be elevated to such a role over this planet.
Do you actually want workable less-polluting solutions? Then be against this ban and for electric airplanes which will solve this problem very soon.
> large parts of the world already show significant impact from desertification.
If you got rid of all flights globally, this would not be changing as a result. There are also massive reforestation projects undergoing worldwide and those will continue to gain traction as more land frees up for reclamation by nature and park preserves.
> why should the sustainability transition be performed via centralized tyranny? If people stop spreading misinformation at the behest of vested interests and we develop reliable measures of environmental impacts a democratic society is perfectly capable to make the rational choices
They exaggerate the extent of climate woes in order to cement their own power and luxury. That's most of what it is. The real efforts against climate corruption are in renewables and clean transport. Progress is already at breakneck speed and still climbing on these fronts.
It's the same group of people who were insisting that we need to lockdown and drastically change every aspect of society because of the pandemic. Now mountains of evidence are emerging that not only were the lockdowns mostly unnecessary, they may have been actively harmful more than good.
A democratic society making these changes on its own without over-centralization is as simple a matter as people adhering to the United States Constitution and working together at the community level to build more solar, clean up roads, install EV charging stations, etc. That's already happening. So why is it necessary for France to top-down ban short-haul flights in the name of emissions when that action will hurt quality of life without moving the needle? It's because their motives are impure. Some of them are tyrants-in-waiting.
This argument doesn't really hold up given current law. I'm prohibited from removing all kinds of emissions devices on my personal vehicles driven on my own personal property all the time under US Federal law.
Why should someone be allowed to have emissions just because they are flying a plane?
There are some practical reasons but safety is certainly one.
Unlike cars, the lifespan of an airplane is usually measured in decades. Not saying it's impossible, but you can't demand we redesign airplanes overnight to add a bunch of weight and complexity for a fleet that was mostly built in the 1950s-1970s. I would also note, I am a shade tree mechanic and work on a lot of cars, the #1 source of failures in modern cars is almost always complicated emissions control systems, so it's a harder problem than it looks like.
It's moreso that nobody is in a position to start dictating to someone else what they can or can't do on account of emissions. That would be a dystopia and a bunch of bureacrats citing "collective survival" to ban things and stunt everyone else while they recline in luxury. That is what history shows.
What does removing emissions devices on your personal vehicles have to do with whether or not someone wants to fly? Advocate for better devices and less invasive devices that do not add costs. That's a separate concern and subject from whether or not someone can fly.
All your argument would do is just justify The Next Ban with flimsy justifications.
"start dictating" - this is literally how emissions laws work in the US. If I am allowed to impose unlimited externalities on others for my own personal gain then why would I ever choose not to?
I do agree it's stupid leaded gas is still in use, it should have been phased out a long time ago. I'm just pointing out, a Cessna's GHG emissions aren't that far off (or might even be less) than a typical small recreational boat.
so you're just unashamedly carbonwashing general aviation. "It's got less GHG so it's GOOD". How about I show up at your house and sprinke lead all over it non stop every day?
I've written a letter to the FAA in support of getting rid of leaded gas. I've written my Congress critters about the issue several times. I'd love to see it end. I don't personally do any GA, I've never flown in any of those planes, I've never bought avgas. I'm not in support of the use of leaded gas in the slightest.
What have you personally done to remedy the situation?
All I'm trying to do is share knowledge. I imagine many people on this forum would have thought a Cessna would have used more gas than a speed boat. Chill out.
But if we allow people to take off on a plane for fun, why shouldn't we allow people to collectively share a plane and get to their destination for a variety of reasons? This partial ban seems unfair otherwise
I imagine this ban doesn't affect a GA pilot taking a few of their friends along for a flight. But this is a pretty rare use, it's impact is extremely less than commercial operators doing constant flights on much larger planes every day.
GA pilots generally aren't flying Airbus A320s with like 120 seats, they're flying Cessnas and Pipers with like maybe half a dozen seats. They're maybe flying every couple of days instead of back and forth a few times a day, every day of the week.
Ok, but the commercial planes are taking a lot of people for reasons that impact commerce (tourism, business meetings, etc). A private flight for pleasure should obviously be banned before those use cases if we're purely thinking of global warming.
I am against banning any aviation use btw, this is too unfair to a particular group of people and is not based on any objective standard. Any aviation restriction that doesn't start with not letting the rich have private flights is unfair.
That private flight every now and then has such extremely negligible emissions compared to a whole industry of much larger planes which fly as much as economically possible.
Can you really not see the difference between these two different usages?
General aviation isn't for the ultra rich, it's just another hobby that's accessible to the middle class. We're talking decades-old Cessna 172's, not Learjets.
It's flying for fun, to sightsee. Or learning how to fly in order to get a pilot's license!
If you want to ban them for wasting fuel, you might as well ban people from taking leisurely Sunday afternoon sightseeing drives.
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.
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.
> 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].
Increasing carbon taxes (even on planes) is a political no-no for the foreseable future (yellow jacket PTSD.)
We have a big plane industry, Airbus is _very_ actively working on EP (no idea if they will achieve anything, but, hey...)
I doubt this law should affect them much - their target is probably to "fix" private jets and very short trips rather than intercities, anyway.
I'm pretty sure that if they ever find a way to make fully electric flights between the _three_ routes that are canceled by this law, then the _three_ routes will re-open.
The question now is whether this is opening the road to banning more routes (the CDG situation is _really_ absurd, and will probably be a political bargaining chip in the future), if other countries will copy the idea, if the overton window will shift to banning private jets, etc...
Fairly symbolic at the moment, but if you believe in the "small steps actually taken vs ever-postponned revolution", that's a thing.
> doubt this law should affect them much - their target is probably to "fix" private jets and very short trips rather than intercities
Airbus is (perhaps intentionally) untouched. It's the space below them, which is being aggressively pursued by start-ups, that's being cut off at the knees by Paris.
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.
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.
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.
You still haven't fleshed out a decent conspiracy theory. WHICH bureaucrats are intent on preventing people from flying? WHAT do they gain by achieving this end?
You're wrong. There are 9-seater craft that already had maiden voyages at the start of the year. Those will just increase in size and range. Progress in tech is moving very fast including in electric airplanes and France could accomplish it's claimed goals around emissions without bans.
Fair enough, it's a hard problem to work on indeed. But I would ask, why not raise investment then? Why is the solution a ban, when we have working prototypes that get better every month and that have done maiden voyages? The solution is larger investments and partnerships into more R&D on these crafts, not to shutter the prospect entirely...
My point is precisely that: those investments are happening, that R&D is happening, and electric planes will happen, and they will reach commercial scale at some point.
And when then do (I would probably bet "in 10 to 15 years", and I would absolutely bet "later than you're optimisticly hoping", because that's what the people making the planes are saying [1] [2]), then the bans won't make sense, sure. At some point.
But the emphasis is _AT SOME POINT_, where the commercial fossil fuel propelled planes are travelling and emitting _RIGHT NOW_. The best time to reduce the number of flights was 20 years ago, the second best time is now.
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.