France Wants To Ban Cheap Airline Tickets To Help Environment

Many countries have set specific climate goals, and achieving those goals requires taking touchable steps to reduce emissions. Withal those lines, France’s Minister of Transport has made a proposal that’s raising some eyebrows…

France proposes minimum airline ticket prices

France’s Minister of Transport, Clément Beaune, has outlined plans to substantially eliminate ultra-cheap airline tickets within France. Beaune has proposed “the establishment of a minimum air ticket price” in order to “fight versus social and environmental dumping.”

He plans to submit this proposal in the days to come. As he describes it, “plane tickets at 10, at a time of ecological transition, this is no longer possible,” and that “this does not reflect the price for the planet.”

This would initially only wield to domestic flights, given that this would be much increasingly complicated to implement on international flights, given varying international laws. Keep in mind that France once recently banned many short haul domestic flights, which can be covered by train in up to 2hr30min.

It’s not entirely well-spoken yet in what form this legislation would come. Would the country simply set a minimum ticket price, and airlines can pocket higher margins? Would the higher ticket forfeit come in the form of a ticket tax? If so, what would that tax revenue be used for?

My take on this proposed legislation in France

I can fathom the rencontre that governments squatter with trying to unzip their goals of reducing stat emissions. However, it seems like a lot of governments are going well-nigh this wrong, and aren’t focusing on the big picture.

To start, let’s just transiently discuss the arguments that airline executives tend to make. For example, the CEO of ultra low forfeit carrier Wizz Air argues that merchantry matriculation should be banned, considering it’s bad for the environment. Meanwhile the CEO of Lufthansa argues that it’s irresponsible to sell 10 flights in terms of the environmental impact. How user-friendly that they have these perspectives!

If you ask me, governments wanting to reduce emissions from air travel should:

• Ban or heavily restrict private jets, since the emissions there are unduly large
• Incentivize airlines to operate modern jets with good fuel efficiency, and to operate flights that are full, so that the per-passenger emissions are as low as possible
• If there are going to be spare taxes on flying, they should directly and transparently be invested in efficient climate offset schemes, rather than just stuff used to pad the government’s marrow line

So withal those lines, I find France’s proposal to be kind of silly. The country would substantially penalize those passengers flying most efficiently, while giving a lot of pricing power to airlines like Air France. Also, the impact of this would be truly negligible, as it would only wield to domestic flights within France. There once aren’t many of those, given the previous ban that France has put into place, which doesn’t plane seem to be implementation what was intended (given the need for plane remoter government restrictions).

Bottom line

France’s Minister of Transport is proposing a new minimum ticket price for domestic flights, as he argues that 10 fares are “no longer possible,” and “this does not reflect the price for the planet.” While I can fathom the need to reduce emissions in line with France’s stated goals, this doesn’t seem like a well thought out way to go well-nigh it, in my opinion.

What do you make of France’s minimum ticket price proposal?