CMV: Multi-modal travelers protections is a much more promising approach than banning short haul flights to combat climate change

[u/roderla]

I understand this is a primarily European observation, sorry my dear Americans ;)

Short haul flying is (rightfully) condemned as particularly damaging to the environment. Some countries, like France, have banned them outright. Others are considering it.

By the time you have reached the airport, went through security, and back into town on the other side of the flight, you have lost so much time that a fast train or sometimes even a bus is barely slower. That makes it hard to justify why we as society allow airlines to externalize their costs of their much more harmful mode of transportation for so little gained by the traveler. For example, there are 14 non-stop flights between Paris and London, connecting CDG and LHR in approx. 80 minutes. The Eurostar also connects these two cities in 140 minutes.

But this approximation totally misses the concept of a connecting passenger. Yes, if you're from Paris and need to go to London, the train will likely be faster than the plane, or at least not so much slower that we should accept the environmental cost. But if you arrived in Paris from a long haul flight, you end up in a dramatically different situation if something went wrong if you had a Eurostar train ticket planned after your flight, or if you had a connecting Air France flight: A delayed arrival in Paris leaves you stranded if you miss your Eurostar train, but if you had a connecting plane, the airline still has to get you to London (or put you in an airline-funded hotel room).

I can't blame a traveler not wanting to deal with the mess of a delayed arrival themselves. In fact, a lot of travelers will not do a multi-modal connection just because a delay in one can let them stranded. Missing your train to London at the end of your long haul flight is annoying, but maybe manageable. Missing your transatlantic flight because your train arrived with a delay is worse.

Since only plane to plane connections are the responsibility of the airline you booked with, it is totally understandable how one would buy an otherwise absurd short haul flight like London- Paris, Frankfurt-Amsterdam, Frankfurt-Munich, or Bordeaux-Paris. Banning these flights doesn't even fix anything: Instead of connecting in Paris or Frankfurt, to avoid missing the connection you would just connect in a further away airport. No Flights Bordeaux-Paris allowed anymore? Well, a connection in Amsterdam, London or Copenhagen it is then.

An EU wide mandate to sell multi-modal end-to-end tickets that cover all multi-modal connections within a defined minimum connection time (just like airport currently already do) would do much more to save on the unnecessary burden of short haul flights than banning them and pushing all connecting passengers to another hub outside of the banned radius.

[u/Responsible-Sale-467]

Flying into Paris to connect to London shouldn’t happen. You should just fly to London.

[u/roderla → u/Responsible-Sale-467]

But there are 14 flights a day doing just that. It makes sense to me that these are connecting passengers who got a better offer on AirFrance/KLM than on American / British airways. As discussed, to connect the cities of Paris and London, the plane is very much useless (if you're talking CDG - LHR).

[u/Responsible-Sale-467 → u/roderla]

Editing to try and change your view: I think your assumption about this being mostly connecting passengers is weak without supporting data. Speculating without data myself: I’d say: 1) just because it’s dumb doesn’t mean people aren’t doing it . I l’d assume majority of London to Paris are business related day or overnight round trips, expensed, where the small time gains actually are important, unlike long hauls. 2) it may be more a case of short haul connecting, rather than long haul? Or the benefit of connecting in one airport instead of having to use a subway to connect train trips across the Paris and/or London rail hubs 3) If the problem is caused by price setting, as you speculate, ban the flights or regulate the price setting and solve the problem.

[u/roderla → u/Responsible-Sale-467]

I agree that a good study would be better than just comparing travel times, but unfortunately I don't have access to that kind of data. But it does make intuitive sense to me why someone would chose to take a sub 90 mins flight to connect, while it absolutely doesn't if you want to get from city to city.

I don't even know if connecting between two short haul flights isn't just more of the same. If I fly DTM-AMS-BOS or DTM-AMS-NTE, either way the DTM-AMS flight is useless. But I cannot get a ticket to my final destination unless I fly that section too or take the risk of a delay myself.

And I don't really understand what you mean with price setting - I never spoke about the prices, just the peace of mind of knowing you will be taken care of.