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The never seen before condition of French aviation is going to face another hurdle in ban of short haul flights .
When poorest state of aviation is busy doing overtime to persuade their respective goverments to open summer travel , French lawmakers have other ideas !
On saturday, French National Assembly supported a draft bill that aims a ban on domestic flights on short routes that can be serviced by trains in less than two-and-a-half hours.
France is following the national agenda of carbon emissions control and bring the foot print cut by 40% in 2030 from levels recorded in the 1990s.
Green efforts and demonstrations are not new in France ! Last month, on 5th march - Nine Green peace activists, climbed the outer fence of the CDG airport and applied green paint to a Boeing 777 Air France aircraft parked on the tarmac, as a part of broader protests.
The legislation has evoked harsh criticism from the aviation industry that says, a period of post-pandemic recovery is not the right time to halt domestic flights.
On the other hand, environmental activists want more such bans and they criticized the measure for being insufficient.
A citizens’ climate forum established by French President Emmanuel Macron to help shape climate policy had reportedly called for scrapping flights on routes where the train journey is under four hours.
The Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat (CCC), had earlier outlined a series of eco-measures for the aviation sector .
The CCC had suggested environmental eco tax on aviation to a scale that would discourage air travel and raise around €4.2 billion in taxes annually.
► The eco-Tax proposal on economy class tickets was proposed :
► And eco-Tax proposal for business class was :
► Other Aviation specific measures suggested by the CCC include:
The recent vote followed a french government's €4 billion ($4.76 billion) recapitalization of the country’s flag carrier Air France, in an effort to increase its stake in the national airline.
The reproaches voiced by the aviation sector were strongly dismissed by the country’s Industry Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher, who stressed that there was no contradiction between the bailout and the climate bill.
“We know that aviation is a contributor of carbon dioxide and that because of climate change we must reduce emissions. Equally, we must support our companies and not let them fall by the wayside,” the minister told Europe 1 radio.
