Spain is the latest country to ban short-haul flights—but it won’t be the last

For all the press that flight shaming has gotten in recent years, air travel is still on the rise. This year, we’re expecting to see more global flights than in 2019, according to Skift—something that hasn’t happened since the pandemic. So, in the absence of travelers voluntarily reducing flight demand, some governments are stepping in to make short-haul travel harder or at least more expensive.

Spain is the latest country to announce plans to reduce short-haul domestic flights. Following a move from France last year, Spain will bar domestic flights between destinations that are less than 2.5 hours away from each other by train. Last year, France was the first country in the world to implement such a ban.

On paper, this may sound like a jarring move, but in practice, not all of these flight routes will be canceled. Short-haul options will still exist to connect international travelers with their final destinations, for example. Plus, when you think about how much time it takes to arrive early for a flight to get through security—and the fact that most airports are not located in the center of a city, unlike train stations—the total travel time is likely not going to be significantly different.

“For most travelers, the impact of this is probably very low,” Seth Miller, an industry analyst and founder of aviation site PaxEx.Aero, told AFAR. “In many cases, airlines are keeping flights in place even on the shorter routes to handle connecting traffic for passengers coming in from overseas. But if you are planning a multicity trip once you’re in Spain and France, you may find yourself with fewer options to get between the cities once you’re there. Personally, I think it’s okay, though, because the trains are generally a more pleasant experience.”

Last year, after France first announced the ban, airlines lobbied to overturn it on the grounds that it violated the European Union’s freedom of movement. However, the EU upheld the ban. The actual environmental impact of the ban has been called into question however, with both airline lobbyists and environmental activist groups saying its sustainability merit is mediocre at best.

“If we banned all flights of less than 500 kilometers in Europe … it would be less than 4 percent of the CO2 in Europe, right?” Willie Walsh, head of the International Air Transport Association, told Reuters at the time. “I think there’s a perception that it would be 80 percent. It’s not a solution.”

A Greenpeace campaigner told Reuters the ban was “hypocritical” and would have “no impact.” “They had a strong push to reduce the ambition,” Sarah Fayolle told the news agency. Supporters wanted a ban on flights that could be replaced by train journeys of four to six hours or less.

It’s not yet clear when Spain will implement its flight ban, and it also remains to be seen whether private jets will be restricted. But other European countries are also working on ways to decrease air travel.Austria, for example, offered a pandemic bail out to Austria Airlines in 2020 only on the condition that it would nix flights that could be replaced by a rail in under three hours, and it debuted a tax of €30 on flights under 350 kilometers, and Belgium started tacking on a €10 fee for flights from Brussels airport under 500 kilometers.

Germany, too, increased taxes on some domestic and European flights—by 75 percent—and plans to offer more high-speed train connections to lure up to a fifth of air travelers back to the rails. If successful, domestic air travel emissions could be reduced by about 17 percent, Afar reports.

But perhaps the real question is regarding private air travel, which has been under more scrutiny in the last year as fans have frowned upon Taylor Swift’s private jetsetting between stops on her Eras Tour. While Swift has offset her flights, the efficacy of carbon offsets is murky at best, and private jets can emit up to 10 times more carbon than a commercial one.

For its part, Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport is planning to decrease its overall traffic over the next few years, including reducing its capacity for private jets as of March 31 this year. Eventually, Schiphol plans to ban them entirely. In the meantime, Schiphol is also encouraging airlines to make its planes cleaner and quieter—to aid local residents’ sleep schedules—by charging airlines five times more when they use their noisiest and most polluting planes.

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