Flights that can be covered in under two-and-a-half hours by an equivalent train ride will no longer be allowed to operate in France.
“This is an essential step and a strong symbol in the policy of reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” the country’s Transportation Minister, Clement Beaune, said in a statement following the announcement on Tuesday.
“As we fight relentlessly to decarbonize our lifestyles, how can we justify the use of the plane between the big cities which benefit from regular, fast and efficient connections by train,” the official added.
The ruling has only led to the cancellation of three flight routes so far, connecting Paris Orly Airport with the French cities of Bordeaux, Nantes, and Lyon. The ban leaves short-distance flights to Marseilles, which takes three hours by plane, unaffected.
Laurent Donceel, the head of the industry group Airlines for Europe (A4E), told the French news agency, AFP, that such regulations “will only have minimal effects,” on CO2 emissions and demanded “real and significant solutions,” instead of such “symbolic bans.”
Conversely, the professional body’s strategy to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 includes substituting jet fuel for more renewable sources and introducing electric and hydrogen-powered aircraft.
The new regulation represents a diluted version of French president Emmanuel Macron’s earlier proposal in 2019, banning flights that could be completed by train rides of four hours. Pushback from the national carrier, Air France-KLM, ultimately led the government to walk back and reconsider its initial plan.
However, domestic consumer groups, including UFC-Que Choisir, had originally demanded the government stand by its earlier rhetoric.
“On average, the plane emits 77 times more CO2 per passenger than the train on these routes, even though the train is cheaper and the time lost is limited to 40 minutes,” the group told the BBC on Tuesday. Moreover, UFC-Que Choisir asked the government to implement “safeguards” to prevent national rail carriers from seizing “the opportunity to artificially inflate its prices or degrade the quality of rail service.”
The law, which was first passed in 2021, required the European Commission, a regulatory body of the EU, to approve the measure before its full implementation.