Banning short air routes in the name of the fight against CO2 emissions, a good idea? According to the boss of the main world association of companies, this measure, soon to be applied in particular by France, is “Completely absurd”, he denounced.
“If we eliminated all flights of less than 500 km in Europe, typically targeted to replace them with train connections (…) we would eliminate 24% of flights in Europe. But CO2 emissions (from the aviation sector) would only drop by 3.84%,” pleaded the director general of the International Air Transport Association (Iata), Willie Walsh, citing a report by the monitoring body for Eurocontrol air traffic.
“These political leaders say that the solution is to abolish short flights: it’s completely absurd,” he added to journalists at Iata headquarters in Geneva, pleading once again for the “sky single European”.
A measure to be formalized in a decree
This reform, which began nearly 20 years ago, but which is encountering resistance from certain States, would make it possible to move from an air traffic organization system that follows national borders to a coherent zone where the trajectories of aircraft would be closer to the straight line. “It would reduce emissions by 10% overnight,” insisted Willie Walsh, for whom the debate on air emissions “must be firmly anchored in the reality of the data”.
These criticisms of Iata, whose member companies have committed to “net zero emissions” by 2050, come five days after the European Commission validated the elimination of French domestic flights when a train journey of less 2.5 hours is possible, an emblematic point of the 2021 climate law.
This measure, which results in the facts by the prohibition of flights between Paris-Orly on the one hand and Bordeaux, Nantes and Lyon on the other hand, must still be formalized in a decree.
The figures mentioned by Willie Walsh are consistent with those quoted by the NGO Transport & Environment (T&E), which estimated on Tuesday that “the flight ban [courts] in France is a symbolic measure which will unfortunately have very little impact on emissions”.
“European governments continue to ignore the main source of aviation emissions, namely long-haul flights, which are still not priced or regulated”, lamented T&E, in the midst of a debate in Brussels on the emissions of the airline sector and their taxation.