Future of cheap flights in doubt
By Charles Clover, Environment Editor
(Filed: 30/11/2002)

Government plans to meet growing demand for air travel were thrown into confusion last night when two official expert bodies called for an end to cheap flights and a ban on new runways.

The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution urged the Government to halt airport growth, which would have the effect of raising fares and squeezing out short-haul and no-frills carriers.

At the same time, Tony Blair's body of green advisers, the Sustainable Development Commission, said that proposals for new runways at Stansted, Heathrow, Luton, Rugby or a new airport at Cliffe in Kent required a "fundamental rethink".

The environmental commission, which was founded in 1970, said the extra pollution that would be caused by permitting the predicted growth in air travel from 180 million passengers a year to 500 million would destroy plans to tackle global warming.

Allowing such growth would also be in "fundamental contradiction" to the Government's stated goal of "sustainable development".

The commission, a body of academics, businessmen and people from public life, recommended that the price of a one-way ticket should rise by £40 to have any chance of tackling climate change.

Prof Paul Ekins, an economist and a member of the commission, said: "We believe a stable climate is a good thing and worth modifying human behaviour for."

He said that cheap flights were pandering to a new market for weekends in Venice or Istanbul, not two-week holidays. No one would have contemplated such trips before.

Sir Tom Blundell, professor of biochemistry at Cambridge University and the commission's chairman, admitted that he had just returned from a visit to Hyderabad in India.

He said the present generation was privileged to be able to travel cheaply, but the pollution this caused was unfair to future generations, which would feel the effects of global warming.

"If growth is not curtailed, aircraft will become a very significant contributor to global warming," he said.

Brian Hoskins, a research professor at the Royal Society and former head of meteorology at Reading University, said that, if growth continued unrestricted, vapour trails would cover 10 per cent of the sky over Britain by 2050.

Vapour trails form cirrus clouds that contribute to global warming in addition to emissions from aircraft engines which have three times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.

The commission called for the EU to impose an emissions tax on all aircraft landing and taking off in member states. Trying to impose an international tax on aviation fuel would mean unpicking 4,000 bilateral agreements.

The commission called for the rapid growth of high speed trains to replace short-haul services and for the development of "transport hubs", such as Schipol in the Netherlands, rather than airports.

The commission reminded the Government that it had issued a warning of the consequences of increasing air travel as long ago as 1994, before the growth of no-frills carriers.

It said: "An unquestioning attitude towards growth in air travel and an acceptance that additional facilities and services must be met are incompatible with the aim of sustainable development."

The Sustainable Development Commission also called for curbs on growth. One of its members, Charles Secrett, the director of Friends of the Earth, said: "Society as a whole has to accept the necessity of accepting limits and constraints."

The reports are the second major blow this week to the Government's airport plans. On Tuesday the High Court said that it was wrong to have ruled out Gatwick from its plans for runway expansion. The consultation period will now have to last another six months.

The aviation industry reacted angrily to the findings of the two commissions. Roger Wiltshire, of the British Air Transport Association, said: "The idea of rationing air journeys is unrealistic if not quite frankly dotty.

"The Royal Commission makes no assessment of the economic and social disbenefit that would be caused by some of it proposals.

"Improving rail travel is a great idea. If people are attracted to switch from air for some short journeys, that is marvellous. But the figures are peanuts when it comes to planning airport capacity."