Short-haul flight ban
In the 21st century, several governments, organisations and companies have imposed restrictions and even prohibitions on short-haul flights, stimulating or pressuring travellers to opt for more environmentally friendly means of transportation, especially trains.
[5] In a September–October 2019 poll conducted by the European Investment Bank (EIB) amongst 28,088 EU citizens from the then 28 member states, 62% said they were in favour of banning 'short-haul flights'; the survey did not define the term.
[38] On 9 June 2020, during a lull in the COVID-19 pandemic in Belgium, Flemish Transport Minister Lydia Peeters [nl] participated in a short-haul flight of ASL Group from Brussels via Knokke to Antwerp, claiming she wanted to promote regional airports such as Antwerp, Ostend, Kortrijk during the aviation crisis, because she was "convinced that regional airports have a future in Flanders because of their economic importance."
For several days, her action was fiercely criticised by citizens and environmental organisations, who argued regional airports were "not economically essential at all, but a source of damaging and perfectly avoidable CO2 emissions".
[39][40] Timmermans' proposal triggered a fierce debate in Germany about banning short-haul flights (meaning shorter than 1,500 kilometres), with some politicians agreeing with him, others saying it went too far, and others supporting measures they deemed more appropriate.
[44] In September-October 2022, research by RTL Nieuws revealed that Dutch ministers, state secretaries and the royal couple Willem-Alexander and Máxima were increasingly making short business flights on the Dutch government aircraft PH-GOV (a Boeing 737-700), private aircraft or commercial airliners (a 38% increase compared to 2019), even though this was contrary to the January 2022 coalition agreement to discourage short flights.
Moreover, many aircraft flew empty back and forth in inefficient and environmentally polluting ways, and most distances could in principle have been covered perfectly well by train, or, if necessary, scheduled flights.
and coalition party CDA also raised parliamentary questions about short and environmentally polluting empty flights, for instance between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, for a limited gain of time for a minister.
Opposition party GroenLinks wanted to field a motion to force the cabinet and the king to travel by train for trips shorter than 700 kilometres.
[51][52] In July 2019, Technische Universität Berlin professor Martina Schäfer similarly initiated a "Commitment to renounce short-haul (business) flights' (described as "travelable without flying in below 12 hours", or 1,000 kilometres), which was signed by over 1,700 German academics by 20 September 2019.
"Attending congresses is sometimes mostly just stimulating your ego, and a nice trip, (...) but for the planet's sake, this is a privilege that we can no longer afford on this scale", Enneking stated; she stopped flying in 2017.
[51] Cody Hochstenbach (University of Amsterdam) narrated how many short (for example, two days) international research meetings are:[55]great to catch up with each other and to discover a new city, but seldom they are actually productive.
I find it even more insane that universities facilitate and even encourage this behaviour.Referring to arguments made by other academics, he added that this behaviour was a form of socioeconomic injustice towards many people with lower education and income who could never even afford such long flights.
Such advantages do not outweigh the environmental damage, however," recounting her experience of a conference where scientists discussed research that had already been published and thus "a waste of time and flight CO2 emissions".
[56] While acknowledging that the current intensity should be reduced, other academics partially disagree, saying that, especially for young researchers, getting and staying in touch with their international colleagues in real life can really help to establish their network and advance their career, and make interactions easier and more complete than via video.
"[57] Leiden University has not introduced short-distance restrictions on flights, but set train travel as the norm for personnel journeys shorter than 6 hours or 500 kilometres since 2017.
