Short distance flights - sense or nonsense?

Airplanes emit CO2, that's common sense. And reducing the carbon footprint of aviation is equally important as it is for any other sector, that emits CO2.

Lately, the debate around short distance flights gained a lot of political attention, including several proposals to forbid domestic and/or short distance flights and replace them with ground transportation, ideally by train. And as around 30% of all flights globally fly less than 500km, it sounds like a straightforward idea to save a lot of CO2.?

Sounds logical, but it isn't...!

Short distance flights don't carry short distance travelers

The vast majority of short distance flights are feeder flights to larger hubs. For example on a flight from Graz to Vienna, there are hardly any passengers that fly from Graz to Vienna. More than 95% of those passengers connect in Vienna to other flights, for instance to New York or to Shanghai. If this flight wouldn't be offered, the passengers would most likely not switch to a train to Vienna, but to another feeder flight, that flies for instance from Graz via Amsterdam to New York or from Graz via Istanbul to Tokyo. These feeder flights obviously aren't serving short distance trips... So after all no flights would be saved, in many cases the passengers would even fly longer detours and foreign airlines would be more than happy to take the business - at the detriment of the home carrier.

However, if the ground/train connection is good enough, we are more than happy to do the feeding by train. But this requires a really good connection with significantly less travel time than three hours directly into the hub airport. As long as this is not fulfilled, the passengers won't switch to the ground and no CO2 will be saved.

In May 2021, France decided to forbit short distance flights if a train connection below 2,5h is available. However, what most people didn't note, France excluded connecting flights from this ruling. And since the vast majority of all short distance flights are connecting to a hub, there are obly very few flights, that acutally have to be cancelled. In Austria, just as a comparison, there is not a single domestic flight, that is not connecting.

Short distance flights contribute only little to the CO2 emission of airlines

Global aviation accounts for 2,8% of global CO2 emission. And only 4% of these 2,8% are emitted by short distance flights below 500 km distance. So they contribute roughly one promille to the total global CO2 emission. Of course every saved ton of CO2 is a good one. However, if you take into account, that most of the passengers on these flights are connecting passengers, many of them would still take a flight - but to a different hub - and those who use ground transportation are not CO2-free either, the factual saving of CO2 emission is very limited.

Just as an illustration: In 2017, Austrian Airlines cancelled the short distance flights from Linz to Vienna. This flight had a flying distance of about 200 km and there is a direct train connection from Linz to the Vienna airport, that takes only 1:53 hours. In a good cooperation with the Austrian Railway ?BB called "AiRail", we are offering plane tickets that can be used on the train and as an airline we guarantee the connection to the onward flight - so basically the same product that you would experience if we had offered a flight. And guess what? On the train we recaptured less than 50% of the Linz->Vienna->World passengers, that we previously had. The others are now using connecting flights via Frankfurt or other transit airports.

I am fully aware, how important symbols are in politics. And short distance flights are such a symbol. Not less and not more. We should prevent them, when it is reasonable and a very good train connection to the hub airport is available. But we shouldn't believe, that such cancellation has a significant impact on the climate. However, we should focus far more on the other 96% of CO2 emissions in aviation, that can certainly not be replaced by ground transportation.?

The good news is, that there is a solution in sight, that can make the entire aviation climate friendly. And this solution is called "Sustainable Aviation Fuels". More about these "Sustainable Aviation Fuels" in my next article...