Another idea that won’t fly here
Harry McGee
From this morning’s Guardian. A radical idea. See below. Politically suicidel here. The documentary on advertising on RTE last night featured the first Ryanair aid, the one that claimed that Aer Lingus was charging nearly a hundred quid for breakfast. The cheap Ryanair alternative was a £95 return fare to London. Taking inflation and all other indices into account, the cheap fare seems ludicrously high.
People have taken a battering here. And the weather has been appalling. Logically, higher fares make more sense. But any politician who would float it would be cruising for a bruising. In horrendously tough times, people view cheap flights abroad as their last refuge.
Cost of air travel ‘must rise to deter people from flying’
David Batty, Caroline Davies
guardian.co.uk News Wed 9 Sep 2009 08:29 BST
Government advisory body on climate change says ticket prices should rise to ensure that CO2 emissions fall back to 2005 levels
The cost of air travel must rise to an extent that it deters people from flying and to compensate developing countries for the damage it does to the environment, according to the government’s advisory body on climate change.
Ticket prices should rise to ensure that carbon dioxide emissions from aviation fall back to 2005 levels and to raise tens of billions of pounds in flight taxes to help developing nations adapt to climate change, for example, by building new flood defences, the committee on climate change says.
An agreement to cap aviation emissions must be reached at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen if countries are to meet targets to combat global warming. Rich countries should take the lead, ensuring their aviation emissions are no higher or lower than they were in 2005 by 2050, the committee said in a letter to ministers.
It says airlines should be forced to share the burden of meeting that emissions cut, the Times reports.
