On April 10, 2021, the French National Assembly voted to ban short-haul flights on routes where a train journey taking less than two and a half hours is available, in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from aircraft.1 This came days after the same French government bailed out the privately owned Air France-KLM, which, like most airlines around the world, has been on its knees since COVID-19 lockdowns virtually destroyed international air travel.
The French government’s ban, if it passes the senate, will deprive travelers of choice and harm already-struggling airlines. The train services that the government hopes passengers will use instead are largely operated by SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français), owned by the French government.
SNCF is well-known in France for its unreliability; its employees have gone on strike at least once every year since 1947.2 In 2014, SNCF had to rebuild platforms at more than one thousand stations after realizing that its new trains were too wide.3 Problems with the delivery of new trains and the unreliability of old ones resulted in poor punctuality in the Normandy region throughout 2020.4 It is likely that, if the ban is enacted, many travelers will instead choose the convenience of a car journey, increasing road congestion and fatalities, and undermining the environmental goals purportedly behind the ban.
France is not alone in attacking the aviation industry. Sweden, where Greta Thunberg’s “flight-shame” movement started, recently imposed high tariffs on airlines that haven’t invested in expensive new lower-emission and alternative-fuel aircraft.5 A recent paper in Nature Climate Change argued that, if we want to keep global warming within safe limits, we must achieve an emissions drop equivalent to that caused by COVID-19 travel reductions every two years.6 The French ban is the first in what may be many such uses of government power against the aviation industry to bring about such a reduction.
These pushes to reduce air travel are a regressive step, undoing human advancement. They are motivated by an ideology that is, at its core, antihuman and anti-progress—one that favors preserving the untouched natural world over individual rights and human well-being. If governments continue to operate on this ideology, we will see wider restrictions on flying in the future, also targeting longer-haul and freight aviation. If this happens, it will not only prevent individuals from using this great travel choice, but it will further harm an industry that has been utterly devastated by government-imposed lockdowns in the wake of COVID-19. In the long run, more airlines will collapse, more people will lose their jobs and livelihoods, and international travel and trade will decrease, cutting off exchange between billions of people.7
Flying is the safest form of travel available today.8 It gets people to their destinations faster than any other mode of transportation, freeing up travelers’ time to spend on their own lives, ensuring speedy delivery of important goods, reducing highway traffic, and making roads safer. It also makes international travel available to lower-income people and cheaper for everyone. Aviation improves the lives of people across the world.
Further, the aviation industry is progressing at a remarkable rate. Even without government pressure to cut emissions, economic pressures are driving manufacturers to produce engines that are more fuel efficient. With emerging technologies such as better engines and commercial supersonic jets, aviation will soon become even faster, safer, and cleaner than today—if governments don’t first quash the financial incentives driving such innovation.
Airlines have been devastated already. Further restrictions are only going to damage them even more. Rather than restricting air travel, we should let it grow, evolve, and continue improving the lives of people across the world.
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Endnotes
1. “French Lawmakers Approve a Ban on Short Domestic Flights,” Reuters, April 11, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-france-flights-idUSKBN2BY0AO?taid=6072cd524ab4da0001c1936c.
2. “Not One Year since 1947 without SNCF Strike in France,” The Connexion, December 20, 2019, https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/Not-one-year-since-1947-without-SNCF-workers-going-on-strike-in-France-data-study-shows.
3. “French Red Faces over Trains That Are ‘Too Wide,’” BBC News, May 21, 2014, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27497727.
4. Oliver Cuenca, “SNCF Presents Action Plan for Normandy,” International Railway Journal, October 29, 2020, https://www.railjournal.com/regions/europe/sncf-presents-action-plan-for-normandy/.
5. Agence France-Presse, “Sweden to Increase Airport Fees for High-Polluting Planes,” The Guardian, March 23, 2021,
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/23/sweden-to-increase-airport-fees-for-high-polluting-planes; Jon Henley, “#stayontheground: Swedes Turn to Trains Amid Climate ‘Flight Shame,’” The Guardian, June 4, 2019,
6. Fiona Harvey, “Equivalent of Covid Emissions Drop Needed Every Two Years—Study,” The Guardian, March 3, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/03/global-lockdown-every-two-years-needed-to-meet-paris-co2-goals-study.
7. According to Oxford Economics, the aviation industry contributes £52 billion to the UK economy annually, or 3.4 percent of the country’s total GDP. “Economic Benefits of Air Travel in the UK,” Oxford Economics, November 2014, https://www.aoa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Economic-Benefits-from-Air-Transport-in-the-UK.pdf.pdf.
8. Although there were 1.58 deaths per billion passenger kilometers for car journeys, 24.02 death per billion kilometers for pedal cycles, and 83.39 deaths for motorcycles in the UK between 2005 and 2015, there were no deaths at all for aviation journeys. “How Safe Is Aviation?,” UK Civil Aviation Authority, https://www.caa.co.uk/Safety-initiatives-and-resources/Aviation-safety-review/How-safe-is-aviation/.
