Great Western Coffee Shop

This idea of green strings has been around for a while, with Mark Carney (from under his new UN hat) promoting the idea back in early May.The EU commission was agin' it, but the conditions attached to injections of government cash into Air France and Austrian did include reducing domestic routes. Now the French government has said it will prevent other carriers (read low-cost ones) picking up those routes.

They have a particular reason to do this, wanting to appear to take some notice of the citizens' climate convention that reported yesterday. This odd constitutional beastie had members chosen by lot and two co-chairs well to the green of centre, and was asked to find ways to cut CO₂ by 40% by 2030. It came up with some quite radical demands-cum-suggestions (it's not clear what its status is), but only in the areas that weren't too difficult to even touch. I think there was one about banning domestic flights, but I can't find it now and the actual text isn't visible yet.

Anyway, the plan is (https://www.euractiv.com/section/aviation/short_news/frances-short-haul-flight-ban-to-target-low-cost-flyers/) that any flight within France where the "same" journey has a time by train of under 2¹/₂ hours will not be allowed.

Interesting idea.  Just shows you what can be done when you have a comprehensive high speed rail network.   ;)

It also ties into the post-Covid* mood of retrenchment and what can be called either shortening supply chains or economic nationalism,** depending on preference.

*Yeah, I know Covid is still here and the mood was present before, but the pandemic has both strengthened and legitimised it.
**Some have even called it autarchy, which is rather an exaggeration.

I am not convinced that airlines should be bailed out, even with "green strings"
Air travel burns a great deal of fossil fuel.

Let most of the airlines go bust, and many of the less used airports.
The surviving airlines would then have to charge higher fares that better reflected the true and not subsidised costs of running the operation.

I would consider subsidy of a handful of individual routes, but only in exceptional circumstances when air transport is the only viable link to remote communities.
I see no merit in subsidising popular routes within mainland Europe, let the market decide WITHOUT subsidy.

Spend the money saved by not bailing out airlines on railways.
More trains.
Faster trains.
Longer trains.
Battery trains, where 25 KV not viable.

Mail and express parcels should go by rail whenever possible. Urgent and perishable freight also.

Every one a winner.......🤦‍♂️😉

That plan to ban all domestic air routes with an alternative by rail taking less that 2h30m did make it into a law two years ago. It hasn't quite been enacted yet, but airlines were told to get ready for it and in any case Air France's bail-out plan made them do some of it.

So, what has actually happened? There were three routes dropped right away, from Orly to Nantes, Bordeaux, and Lyon. They would probably have closed anyway, for standard commercial reasons, since enough passengers found the train preferable to make them unprofitable. Similar routes from CDG, however, still operate, including one to Rennes where the train's time is shortest of all.

These are ones Air France wanted to keep, as feeders for long-haul services. The government wanted to make an exception for that explicitly, but the EU said no to that, so a sneakier way to do the same thing was found. There are TGVs - not many, but some - from the station at CDG, and they were used as the comparator, and St Exupéry for Lyon. That lengthens the train times, but even so for Rennes and Lyon they were under 2h30m. But the few trains that run don't include early and late times to fit with the long-haul services, so the train option could be found not a viable alternative.

I'm sure someone would be complaining about this, if they weren't all busy complaining about something else at the moment.

That law has now been formally enacted, having had to wait for a study by the EC into a complaint by some airlines that it was against EU single market rules and in any case not an effective counter to climate change. That study has not led to any changes, and the law still includes the let-outs for connecting to long-haul flights, use of trains from CDG as comparators, and a requirement for trains at the times flights need them. So it only affects the three services that were closed back in 2020.