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Brussels is back on its crusade to abolish short-haul flights anywhere there is a 2.5 hour train alternative, but Spain is once again pushing back hard against the proposal. Both Aena, the Spanish airport management company, and the airlines themselves say this is unrealistic as Spain simply doesn’t have the rail infrastructure to cope.

 

“In Spain, currently only 3% of traffic has a high-speed rail alternative of less than 3.5 hours,” an Aena spokesperson pointed out, adding that “by the time new rail infrastructure is required, with an average of 18-26 years of construction, aviation will have already achieved its zero-emissions goal.”

 

The CEOE (Spanish Economic and Monetary Union) has adopted a similar stance, warning that “without adequate airport rail infrastructure, imposing flight bans risks diverting traffic to non-EU hubs.”

 

The debate over short-haul flights has resurfaced as several countries across the EU, including Spain, struggle to implement low-emission zones, and this week the European Commission acknowledged that restricting road traffic “may not be the most appropriate instrument for addressing global CO2 emissions.”

 

And so, short-haul flights are back in the spotlight. Naturally, there has been major pushback from the airlines, particularly the smaller operators for whom shorter, domestic flights make up the lion’s share of their business.

 

The limitation has already been enforced in some European countries without too much disruption. France, for example, scrapped short-haul flights connecting Bordeaux, Nantes and Lyon with Paris-Orly Airport back in May 2023.

 

Around the same time, a programmatic agreement was signed by the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) and Sumar to reduce domestic flights “on those routes where there is a rail alternative with a duration of less than two and a half hours,” except in cases of connections with international routes.

 

The initiative, which remains in the same drawer as the future Sustainable Mobility Law, has already prompted the inclusion of a ban on advertising for short-haul flights in the draft Sustainable Consumption Law.

 

 

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