What would persuade frequent fliers to fly less?

[hippospot]

I read this very article and liked the suggestion of having to pay more for each subsequent flight you take in a year. Maybe a family who take one holiday a year won't be penalised but the people who fly multiple times a year would face increased penalties the more they fly. Currently 5% of the population is taking 33% of the flights!

I worry so much about climate change but people around me seem to not be making any adjustments to their carbon-heavy lifestyles. What could be the solution in your view?

I don't really want to debate whether flying is the biggest cause of climate change. It isn't. But it's one of the biggest discretionary changes we can make to our impact on the climate as individuals.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/oct/03/heathrow-third-runway-climate-warnings-economic-reality?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

DH would fly less if he retired. He’s a frequent flyer because he works abroad. I’m sure this applies to many frequent flyers.

What about people who have family abroad, old parents they need to frequently see? What about people who have to travel abroad for work. What if their family holiday is the last trip of the year and therefore the biggest ‘fine’ applies to their holiday

Money, time, and no more rail strikes.

I fly 4-5x a year to see my parents. I used to take the Eurostar but I can only book 2-3 weeks in advance now, so that'd be £300-500 rather than a £200 flight. Flying is far more relaxing and it's 3 hours shorter door to door. No getting up early. No sudden French or Belgian rail worker strikes. No connecting trains that only run once an hour and often get cancelled. Very few clueless stressed passengers with too much luggage (I use small airports). Flight price includes a double g&t and bag of crisps/popcorn 😎

Buisness travel and leisure travel need to be separated.

DH could fly 3 round trips in a week at one point!

Climate change itself is changing how and where people travel. Some countries will be no go areas for large parts of the year - India reaching 45 degrees for example. Then you have the fires and floods, meaning some countries are more dangerous for various months of the year, which are also becoming less predictable and more frequent. Soon there won't be many places people want to go where they don't know what they would do in an emergency. Personally I already feel like that is a worry when I travel, with the Russians, USA/Israel, Sudan, Iran all getting involved in wars that are pulling us into global conflicts at the same time.
Of course you also have diseases that will come, vector borne issues for us as more mosquito's survive into UK and spread things like Malaria which we aren't vaccinated for. Another large outbreak of something that NHS hasn't tracked and traced is possible if we don't keep funding the correct departments and using AI for things where it would be actually useful like epidemiology, rather than gate-keeping jobs from women by filtering CVs and creating divisive posts on social media...
Give it another 10 years and people will feel safer at home. Well, those of us in UK anyway.

Most of its work flights though. I am alwats aghast at the stupid events DH works on where people are flown in from across the planet with absolutely no good reason.

People want to see the sights and go to other countries. Make alternative ways of doing that viable and they’ll chose that instead.
However I don’t want a return to the Grand Tour days where rich kids got to travel and no one else could.

Decent fucking trains.

Nothing. Just like people will have as many kids as they want, despite climate change. No judgment from me (except a little bit when those with several children, going on long haul holidays, preach at everyone else about the environment).

I was also going to say business travel is a big problem. A good friend of mine flies across Europe almost every week to represent his client at in person meetings. There is absolutely no reason they couldn't be Teams calls. But it's 'expected'.

The climate has changed throughout the millenniums..... Flying these days is so unpleasant I can't imagine anyone doing it to excess - unless they have a private jet. That of course is a whole different conversation as financial penalties won't mean a jot.

Businesses considering the environment when making plans - there is little that requires a lot of people in one place these days really.

Reliable, affordable alternative modes of transport. I live in wales and it is cheaper, more straightforward and a lot more reliable to fly to Scotland than to drive, get the train or a bus.

Having more affordable UK holidays. When we looked at where to go for next summer it is cheaper to go to Europe (ferry rather than flying although they were the same price) and stay than a stay in the UK.

I agree changes are needed but as with everything related to the environment, it needs to be businesses making changes first as they will have a bigger impact that individuals (similar to recycling/plastic waste - my family being careful about our usage is a drop in the ocean in comparison to business plastic packaging and waste etc).

I don’t think changing the cost will help as much tbh. As ever, you’ll end up with the rich continuing as they can afford it, but going abroad/flying would end up being something a lot people are priced out of and that doesn’t really help anyone, especially those who have family abroad etc.

Same with mine.

I love the Utopian World some people live in 😂

I agree about travelling for work.
I have a relative who is a frequent flyer. They fly for work purposes. It’s not their choice.

Maybe if I could undertake all my work in my local region, I wouldn’t need to fly to do my job.

Maybe if my family weren’t scattered all over the world, I wouldn’t have to fly to see them.

Maybe if the specialisation course I’m on didn’t require me to be abroad for several weeks every year, I wouldn’t need to fly there regularly.

We’re not really getting on the planes every second week for funsies. I love me an airport and a flight, but I don’t usually do it out of choice. It’s both my livelihood and my family’s lifestyle.

The only thing that would make me fly less is my family moving to this country.

Maybe I should have specified leisure travellers. Clearly if you are forced to travel for your job, or you have family abroad, it's different. What I think upsets me is the people who take 2, 3, 4+ flights a year for leisure, seemingly without any concern for the environment at all. Who fly to Mexico for a beach holiday when there are nice hot beaches much closer to home, for example.

I absolutely agree that trains need to be cheaper. I've taken several journeys by train that would have been cheaper by plane, which has obviously meant saving up for longer in order to do so (obviously this was leisure and not an emergency trip).

As someone said above, it would be awful to return to the days of the European tour when only the very privileged could travel. I agree 100%. But something's got to give. I do get the impression that a lot of travel these days is about Instagram and FOMO and being seen to be well-travelled.

As a species we can't really continue to live as we currently do, can we?

The problem is no one wants to be the only one doing it - it feels pointless to miss out on your lovely holidays if everyone else carries on doing it. I personally wouldn't feel like my not going on holiday would make a difference to the bigger picture, rightly or wrongly. This is moot point btw because I'm skint - I just know I would go if I could.

I think in general, if you want to inspire change, it's more effective to present a positive vision for the future.

Instead of campaigning against people going on holiday, work on campaigning for better, cheaper, faster trains. Lots of people would prefer to go by train, but this option just isn't there.

Just use environmental levies on flights to offset the carbon. If you double-offset then every single one of those flights becomes part of the solution, climate-wise.

Don’t do complicated per-flight increasing pricing. If you want to redistribute from rich to poor, use the existing tax system.

Creating a redistributive system where the beneficiaries can only take the benefit if they fly is a weird policy for anyone who wants less flying.

Direct trains from more UK locations to the continent. Sleeper from scotland to paris/brussels. Night trains are having a real resurgence and Britain needs to be part of it.

That’s all well and good but with your plan the only people who would be affected are Mr and Mrs Ordinary, the wealthy will still continue to fly at will because they can afford to take the hit so you are just increasing the rich/poor divide, it’s the same with any sort of “tax” to curb travel, why should the rich be able to travel as much as they like but not the ordinary person on the street?

I was in Newcastle recently visiting family and got chatting to a bloke who was up there on business from Bristol. He’d flown - because the trains were more expensive and were often delayed.

i’m disabled and retired and holiday in Europe frequently. I got the ferry from Newcastle to Amsterdam but it was a lot more expensive than plane,

I’m looking at using the Eurostar to go to Paris but I hear bad things about passenger assistance for people in wheelchairs.

It doesn’t matter because air travel is 2.5% of emissions and the people going on multiple holidays are a tiny fraction of that.

Something like 10% of all emissions is from excess oil being burnt at oil wells. Another 30% is from making concrete and fertiliser etc.

But arguing for making some industrial processes more efficient isn’t cool or sexy.

Well, TBH I've decided to start doing more, I have spent the last 20 years or so trying to avoid flying as much as possible and feeling virtuous but then going to work and hearing about everyone else's holidays year after year has made me go sod this, I'm fed up with only going in the UK and on ferries, I'm in. Three flight holidays so far this year, one to go, which is more than I usually do in about 5 years.

People are always pushing to make industrial processes more efficient and governments are also legislating to enforce this

unfortunately carbon emissions is a classic tragedy of the commons - no one action is big in itself , each action would be fine if no one else was doing anything

attribution is also difficult - if no one used there wouldn’t be oil being burnt for example

fertiliser is slightly more important than holidays and if we ate less meat we would need way less fertiliser which is why veggie diets are often also highlighted as green choice

ao get over the “my actions don’t count” and realise that everyone’s actions count because we don’t live in isolation on the planet - it’s shared. And the more we normalise good climate friendly actions the better

and yes frequent flyers should be taxed and that includes businesses and private aircraft because these are usually people who are very show off and money oriented