Tax on short flights worries Brussels Airlines
Short trips by plane should be discouraged with a tax. The aviation sector is concerned.
Anyone taking the plane for a flight of less than 500 kilometers will have to pay a tax on their ticket. With this so-called ‘boarding tax’, the government wants to counteract the pollution that is caused. And the tax must also raise 30 million euros. There is not much concrete information yet. The amount to be paid on each short flight must be paid: those modalities have yet to be determined, it sounds.
That is what makes the aviation sector nervous. ‘We are not against a tax, but it should not be a competitive disadvantage,’ says Maaike Andries, spokeswoman for Brussels Airlines. They think of passengers taking short flights to transfer to a long-haul flight. According to her, almost every passenger who flies from Paris to Brussels does this: they transfer there to a flight to Africa. The company wants to keep those transfer passengers exempt from the tax. ‘That is also the case in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris or London,’ says Andries. ‘If these passengers also have to pay that tax, that traffic will shift there. Then you have no climate benefit and our hub model is disadvantaged.’
The Belgian aviation umbrella organization Bata says that such measures are best taken at European or even global level. At the same time, they advocate the reform of the aviation sector.
Correction 13/10, 2:35 AM: A previous version of this article stated ‘According to her, that’s almost what a passenger who flies from Brussels to Paris does: he transfers there to a flight to Africa.’ That was later changed to ‘from Paris to Brussels’.