The boss of Airbus, the European planemaker, has hit out at bans on short flights where rail alternatives are available. Chief executive Guillaume Faury also criticised governments for increasing taxes on flying, saying such moves risk the “social and economic benefits of being connected by air”.
The Airbus CEO was speaking at the company’s 2025 Summit at its headquarters in Toulouse, southwest France.
The French government has brought in a ban on domestic flights where a rail alternative was available between the two cities in less than two hours and 30 minutes. It was first proposed in 2021 and took effect in 2023, but has been criticised for being more symbolic than effective.
Guillaume Faury told The Independent: “We don’t like this two-and-a-half hour rule, which came in during Covid at a time where the connection between those cities by air were loss-making, so there was not a lot of appetite to fight against this. And now we see the local politicians really frustrated with what they see unfolding as a consequence of no longer being connected by air.
“That was a political trade-off that was made. We see in the north of Europe, and other places in Europe, the trend going in the other direction, so the social and economic benefits of being connected by air are more than obvious.
"Taxing, leading to less traffic, is being seen as a problem. That’s what we’re seeing in France as well – we see it already.
“But still I think there is an appetite to tax everything that can be taxed in the current fiscal-budget-economic environment. Aviation is portrayed as a scapegoat for carbon emissions. We are at risk, and we remain at risk.”
Anna Hughes, director of Flight Free UK, said: “The aviation industry has always benefited from little or no tax on its products: there’s no tax on aviation fuel, and no VAT applied to airline tickets.
“While passengers have to pay Air Passenger Duty, it’s a very small tax for an industry that is, overall, significantly undertaxed.
“Why should this already modest tax be removed? Aviation pays almost nothing towards its environmental damage; if taxes are to change at all, it should be to go up.
“Forward-thinking governments should be praised for removing domestic air routes where there’s a rail alternative. Such bans benefit the environment, and therefore all of us, while maintaining interconnectedness for passengers. Governments should be looking to extend schemes like this, not remove them.”
Airbus says it is committed to bringing a commercially viable hydrogen aircraft to market, though the timeline has slipped back.
In the UK, Rishi Sunak encouraged a shift from rail to air by halving Air Passenger Duty for domestic flights in 2023.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has increased Air Passenger Duty at above-inflation rates from April 2026.
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