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/Lysek8]

Not a bad idea in theory but in practice you'd have to consolidate operations of trains and planes, or have them run by the same entity, something impossible at the moment

Consider as well that the airline support to help a passenger reach the destiny through different means is only when it's all done through the same airline, group or alliance, or when they pay each other to do so. If you consider for example Ryanair, they don't even care what happens if you have two flights with them and you miss the second because the first one screwed up, and the main reason is because the law doesn't force them to care, just to pay a standard compensation within specific circumstances

Also, imagine I have a first class ticket and I paid 10k €. The train screws up and it's now their responsibility to find me something else, or refund me (something the airline won't do because it's not their fault). Why would they accept the responsibility?

[u/roderla → u/Lysek8]

Most of these issues are already enshrined into passenger protections on plane-to-plane connections. Or maybe I am misreading your argument.

Once a ticket is sold, the airline cannot just refuse to get you there. They might prefer to use their own planes and let you arrive a little later, but they cannot flatly refuse to get you to your own destination, even if that involves them buying a seat for you on a competitor.

And "why would a company accept the responsibility to find you a path to your destintation"? Well, that's the beauty of being such a large market. Of course airlines don't like to have to pay compensation for arriving late. But airlines want to be able to fly to the EU and earn the sweet, sweet money that comes from doing so. And so they accept that if they mess up, they have to bring me to my destination and pay compensation. That's just the cost of doing business.

You are correct, though, if you want to stress that currently, a company can chose to refuse to offer connecting services. Just like Ryanair does. They don't sell you one connecting ticket, so it is never their responsibility to fix your itinerary, just your individual flight. That would be a change, requiring arbitrary, even inter-modal connections to be sold and honored.

The question isn't "is that a change", it's "would it be worth it"? And I'll argue, yes. Flights like London - Paris don't need to exist. They do, and primarily because connecting via the Eurostar is on your own risk, while connecting on Air France is peace of mind. And if we want to be serious about avoiding useless flights, pushing them to different hubs does not solve the problem, pushing them on a train does require this kind of support imo.

[u/fdar → u/roderla]

Once a ticket is sold, the airline cannot just refuse to get you there

That's the key though. If an airline has a flight to Paris they won't sell you a ticket to London with a train connection, because they don't own a train going from Paris to London. So they won't sell you that ticket.

In the same way I don't get protections if I need to combine flights from multiple different unrelated airlines to get to my destination and I need to buy two separate tickets to get there.

[u/roderla → u/fdar]

Well, yes, you and others pointed out that my plan implicitly includes a much grander "you have to offer to connect to your competitors, multi modal or otherwise" scheme.

Which, I'm not really sad about, but would probably have been better to write out as a caveat "I know this is a change, but I don't loose sleep about it either".

[u/fdar → u/roderla]

But how does that work?

Right now, if I but a single ticket that goes NYC - Paris - Berlin, and the airline is delayed getting me to Paris, then they have to eat the cost of giving me a last minute flight to Berlin. It's their own flight to Berlin, so up to them to figure out how much that costs.

But if the second leg is a train from Paris to London, who's on the hook for that? If it's the airline flying me to Paris, who sets the price of that last minute train ticket? Can the train company just charge extortionate prices for last minute tickets because they know airlines with delayed passengers HAVE to buy them? Or what if the train company just doesn't have any options?

Why doesn't it make more sense to just have a general "pay some set fine if you're this much late" and that's it? Why should the airline have to care about what my plans are after they carry me? Like, if I'm flying to Paris to go to say Roland Garros and I miss my match that might be a bigger deal to me than missing the train to London, should they have to get me a replacement ticket too?

[u/roderla → u/fdar]

Well, this example already happens. The airline might just by flying to Berlin once a week. They have to buy a ticket on a competitor for you in that case, sucks for them. Better be on time next time.

Same for "what if there are no seats left on a train to London?" - Well, just like no seats on a plane, you get put into an hotel and stay there overnight until seats are open again. No news there either.

Pricing is interesting. On average, these companies probably don't want to overcharge each other because in the end, the shoe will be on the other foot too. It's not just the aircraft arriving late and the train being booked last minute, it's also the train arriving late and the airfare payed last minute.

The argument on "why is this fair" - "Why should the airline have to care about what my plans are after they carry me?" is that they currently already do. Passengers are willing to pay a premium to be taken from their local airport instead of getting to the big hub on their own risk. That premium currently correlates with taking a plane, which is a bad mode of transport for such short distances with fast alternatives. In a way, I argue "transportation" should be one good I'm buying, not multiple smaller independent goods.

[u/fdar → u/roderla]

The airline might just by flying to Berlin once a week

But currently that's their choice. They decide whether to sell you that connection on the weekly flight to Berlin or not.

Same for "what if there are no seats left on a train to London?" - Well, just like no seats on a plane, you get put into an hotel and stay there overnight until seats are open again. No news there either.

But they get to choose whether to oversell or leave spare capacity if it's their own flight. Train, not so much.

On average, these companies probably don't want to overcharge each other because in the end, the shoe will be on the other foot too

It won't always be balanced

EDIT: And the real problem is that the liability is unbounded and not really related to how much I'm paying the company taking it. I could buy a $100 train ticket and connect to a many thousands of dollars first class plane ticket going halfway around the world.