Sir, Anatole Kaletsky’s speculation about the motives of campaigners seeking to reduce air travel is wide of the mark (“Workers of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our airline tickets, Mar 9). He claims that we have a hidden agenda in wanting to reduce air travel simply because we see it as “an indulgence of the prosperous classes”, but our objection to the Government’s aggressive plans to expand aviation is rooted in the effects they will have on people and the planet.

At busy airports such as Heathrow over half a million people live under the flight paths, often having to put up with planes from 4.30am and then at 90-second intervals through the day. Ironically, many of these residents belong to the prosperous classes of which Kaletsky maintains we are so contemptuous.

He says that air travel would create 5 per cent of global emissions by 2050, but there is a serious debate about the accuracy of this figure, with many experts putting the figure as high as 15 per cent.

If the noise and emissions problems could be solved, then the current concern about aviation would subside. But it is acknowledged by aviation experts that the projected growth in aviation will more than outweigh any improvements in noise and pollution which technology may bring. That is the reason why we believe there is no alternative but to lobby to curb the growth in aviation.

JOHN STEWART
Chairman, HACAN ClearSkies
(representing residents under the Heathrow flight paths)
London SW9

Sir, Budget air travel, the fastest growing sector in aviation, is contributing disproportionately to carbon emissions. A small additional tax might not deter a club-class business traveller but it is likely to put a different complexion on a penny flight to Prague. At Stansted Airport, where over 90 per cent of traffic comprises low-cost flights, a tax on flying would have a considerable dampening effect.

Questioning the need to fly as often as we do is not about class war but a responsible step that we can all take. Emissions trading, as an alternative solution, is merely a pass-the- parcel game that the aviation industry can afford to play because it receives enormous subsidies by escaping tax and VAT on fuel.

MICHAEL FAIRCHILD
Little Hadham, Herts

Sir, The big increase in air travel and, thereby, carbon emissions is caused not by passengers flying club class across the Atlantic but by countless millions of others taking low-cost flights on budget airlines to destinations they would not otherwise have visited.

As for Mr Kaletsky’s argument that aircraft emissions make up only a tiny proportion of the total — yes, this is true, but because those emissions occur at 30,000ft and above, their impact on the environment is proportionately that much greater.

Bringing aviation into a carbon trading system is the only sane way to tackle the problem. The trick, as ever, will be persuading everyone else to join in.

MICHAEL HARRISON
Hove, E Sussex

Sir, Anatole Kaletsky states that “an additional £9 per ticket fuel tax would achieve absolutely no carbon reduction, since it would not be remotely sufficient to deter people from flying”. This inelasticity of the price of airline travel makes it a superb mechanism by which to raise money for projects to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels, much like the voluntary practice British Airways suggests on its website. Airlines would, as Mr Kaletsky points out, carry on developing more fuel-efficient technology regardless, and the tax revenues raised could go to planting trees, energy-efficiency programmes in rural India and the like.

SAM LYON
Department of Political Science
University of British Columbia
Vancouver

Sir, As a frequent traveller between London and Glasgow, I now forsake the plane for the train. I do this for the green reason, not as “a way of expressing contempt for the rich and privileged”, of whom I am one.

IAN SHAW
Glasgow

Explore Letters

• Feedback