Whether or not you’ve got solid plans to travel this year, we think that everybody in the country will be looking forward to an escape at some time or another. After two years of lockdowns, regulations and other barriers to international travel, we are finally free to go more or less anywhere we’d like. Plus, the €8 currently added to ticket prices by flight tax seems fairly negligible.
However, next year flying is going to be a less attractive prospect, and that’s exactly what the government wants. We all know that planes guzzle gas at an alarming rate and then pump out CO2 into the atmosphere, contributing directly to global warming. In fact, aviation accounts for around 2.5% of global CO2 emissions but other emissions also produced mean that it contributes to 3.5% of global warming.
It is, therefore, better for the environment to take other forms of transport and right now there are more ways to travel than ever before. By 2030 Europe is expected to be connected by high-speed hyperloop trains and more international train services are popping up every day.
The motive behind increasing flight tax is really twofold, though. Of course, the revenue will bring the government around an extra €400 million a year. So the total revenue from flight tax is expected to reach €600 million a year by 2023 so long as people do continue to fly as frequently. However, the idea is to put people off the idea of flying, so we’ll have to wait and see how it all plays out.