Frequent flyer tax would punish the rich to tune of €64bn per year
Published on 17/10/2024
A levy would keep flights cheap for occasional flyers while making multiple flights in a year much more expensive.
Europe’s most frequent flyers having to pay a tax every time they take a flight could raise billions, new research has found.
A frequent flyer tax could raise €64 billion and slash emissions by a fifth, according to a new report from environmental campaign groups Stay Grounded and the New Economics Foundation (NEF)
The tax would rise with each additional flight taken by an individual in a year.
90 organisations and 47 academics, including Greenpeace and ActionAid International, have given their support to the idea.
Why should frequent flyers be taxed more?
Currently, everyone who flies pays the same amount of aviation tax in Europe.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re flying to visit your family for the first time in years, or taking a tenth annual flight to your luxury house on the coast - you’ll be paying the same tax for that flight,” explains Magdalena Heuwieser, an aviation campaigner at the Stay Grounded network.
“A frequent flying levy would be a fair aviation measure, reducing excessive flights for wealthy passengers, while raising revenues - including to expand and provide affordable railways and public transport.”
Poll results in the report show that 52 per cent of respondents in Western Europe don’t fly at all in any given year, while just 11 per cent of people fly more than three times a year.
This is heavily skewed towards the wealthy: 35 per cent of households earning over €100,000 take three or more return flights a year versus just 5 per cent of households earning less than €20,000.
“Only by targeting this tiny minority of air travellers can we reduce our climate impact while maintaining access to the most valued services that air travel provides to the rest of society,” says Finlay Asher, an aerospace engineer in the aviation industry.