Help us cut domestic aviation

Hello

We know aviation is a climate problem, but so far the Government's solution rests on technological advancements still decades away. Yet there is a way to reduce emissions now.

Our new report, Plane speaking: Moving journeys from air to rail, makes the case for reducing emissions from domestic aviation by shifting some journeys to rail instead. It compared the top 23 domestic and UK to Europe flights (which all have a direct rail equivalent) on cost, journey time and carbon emissions and revealed that:

• Over half (57%) of routes were cheaper, or no more expensive by rail
• 70% were quicker, or the same by rail once airport processing times were added to flight times
• Switching half of journeys from the 20 most popular domestic flights to rail would save a total of 342,754 tonnes of carbon in a year: the equivalent of taking 235,850 cars off the road

We already know that travelling by rail within the UK and to the near continent is much more environmentally friendly than flying but, as our report proves, in many cases it is also cheaper, faster and more economically productive.

To help incentivise train travel and reduce carbon emissions from transport, we need to see Government policies which ensure rail is always the easier and cheaper option so that more people can choose the train over the plane.

To help reduce the number of domestic air trips and boost rail journeys, we need the Government to: 

1. Require airlines to give passengers realistic travelling times for domestic flights which include airport processing times
2. Require airlines to publish carbon emissions for domestic flights and the equivalent rail option
3. Introduce a domestic flight reduction target
4. Reverse the cut in Air Passenger Duty for domestic flights

We urgently need to reduce aviation’s impact on the climate. We can not wait for new technologies to do the job, we must act now. Please help by emailing Mark Harper today.