France to ban some short-haul domestic flights as part of climate plan

London (Quantum Commodity Intelligence) - France's National Assembly voted on Saturday to ban some short-haul domestic flights as part of a wide-ranging set of measures aiming to achieve a 40% cut in carbon emissions by 2030, compared to a 1990 baseline level.

The ban will apply to all flights for journeys that could be made by rail in under two and a half hours, but will not apply to connections and hubs and will in reality only affect a handful of the more than 100 domestic routes that airlines covered before the Covid-19 pandemic.

The bill will now pass to the French Senate before a final vote in the lower house.

Neither the aviation industry nor climate campaigners seemed happy with the outcome, with airlines criticising the timing of the bill as the industry struggles with the Covid-19 passenger dropoff and campaigners saying that the bill did not go far enough.

Last week the French government doubled its stake in troubled national carrier Air France, contributing to a €4 billion recapitalisation plan.

Meanwhile, the Citizens' Convention for Climate, a forum created by President Macron in 2019 comprising of 150 randomly selected French citizens, called for a ban on all air routes that could be substituted for a rail journey of less than four hours.