Flights from Southend to Newquay represent all that’s wrong with British transport

In April this year, you will be able to board an Eastern Airways flight from Southend-on-Sea to Newquay. It will cost £60 each way, it will last approximately one hour, and it will represent everything that is wrong with Britain’s approach towards public transport.

This is disappointing on three fronts. The first is that it is environmentally unjustifiable to launch a new domestic flight route in 2025. The second is that demand for such a flight route exposes the weaknesses in Britain’s rail and road networks. And the third disappointment is that we know it is possible to operate an efficient, speedy, affordable domestic public transport system that doesn’t rely on flights, because our friends across the Channel have been doing it for years.

The damage of domestic aviation

Boarding a domestic flight produces more emissions per kilometre than any other mode of transport. According to Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) data published in 2019, domestic flights emit 133g of CO2 per kilometre. Including the secondary effects of high-altitude, non-CO2 emissions (water vapour, particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, for example), domestic flight passengers are accountable for the equivalent of 254g of emissions per km.

By comparison, long-haul flying accounts for 195g of emissions per km per passenger, a car with one passenger is 171g, a bus 104g, a car with four passengers 43g. Near the bottom of the list is a domestic train, which accounts for 41g per kilometre per passenger, while Eurostar passengers emit just 6g. Whichever way you look at it, domestic aviation has a significantly higher carbon footprint than travelling by rail.

In years to come road transport emissions are predicted to fall, but the progress will be slower in aviation due the shortfall and expense of sustainable aviation fuels. Indeed Joe Delafield, the deputy director for aviation decarbonisation at the deputy Department for Transport (DfT) said just this week: “Aviation is set very soon to become the largest transport emitter of CO2, and by 2050 it will be the second largest across the economy after agriculture.”

Other countries have taken note. In 2023, France passed a law banning domestic flights on routes where the journey could be made by train in less than 2.5 hours, effectively ruling out air travel between Paris and Nantes, Lyon and Bordeaux. Some argued they could have been more ambitious by extending the train travel time to 4.5 hours.

Last year, Spain drafted similar legislation which would rule out domestic flights between Madrid and Barcelona, and the Austrian government has introduced a special €30 (£26.50) tax on domestic flights covering less than 217 miles (350 km), and all flight routes with a rail alternative of three hours or less have been banned.

Belgium is also proposing a ban on short flights between domestic airports, known as “flea hops”. In Sweden, the situation is slightly more complex – demand for domestic air travel is down 9 per cent between 2023 and 2024 and the country’s environmental activists famously spearheaded the “flygskam” (flight-shaming) movement. However, in September last year its right-wing government announced it would scrap the country’s flying tax in a bid to boost the economy, to come into effect in July 2025.

Daniel Kihlberg, climate director at the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, told the newspaper Aftonbladet: “It’s completely upside down and the government is giving up completely on climate policy.”

Some have taken a similar view of England’s latest domestic flight route. Responding to the Southend to Newquay flight route, Michael Solomon Williams from Campaign for Better Transport said: “On an island as small as ours, this exposes just how poor the UK’s high-speed rail network is. The south west suffers from some of the worst access to the railway network, with little prospect of the high-speed trains which other countries enjoy anytime soon.”

Why France’s railways are far superior

Part of the reason why France can justify a domestic flying ban is that it has a faster and wider-reaching public transport network than our own. It has the second largest railway network on the Continent (after Germany) and 1,740 miles of purpose-built high-speed tracks compared to the UK’s 71 miles on HS1.

France is also seeing a growing number of overnight trains in operation and there are a number of projects underway to grow the TGV network, including the €14 billion Bordeaux to Toulouse extension, due to open in 2032, which will cut travel times down to 1 hour 5 minutes. Our own attempts to expand our high-speed network have, of course, been thwarted by cost overruns, delays and an inevitable trimming down of the route in 2023 when the north-west section was scrapped. The final tally of the London to Birmingham HS2 project could exceed £66bn, according to a recent progress report.

Anthony Peregrine, Telegraph Travel’s destination expert who lives in the south of France, says: “The rail service in France is terrific. I love swishing up and down the country at 198 mph – which, oddly, never blurs the countryside – with pretty decent food from the buffet, quite often announcements in English and a good chance of arriving on time.

“At 17,400 miles (28,000 km), the TGV and non-TGV network is the second in Europe and it can still get you to some pretty titchy places. If it doesn’t, an integrated bus service usually takes on the job. Plus, the stations may well be impressive, and impressively equipped. If you’ve never eaten at Le Train Bleu at the Gare du Nord in Paris, you’ve no idea how swish station catering might be.

“Plus, in recent years, the Ouigo trains – taking their lead from cut-price airlines – have brought in a budget, stripped back service which provides pretty much nothing except a seat, and so have made rail travel accessible to people otherwise travelling by ultra-cheap short-hop air links, car-share, or not travelling at all.”

Other European countries are finding ways to cut the cost of travelling by rail. Justin Francis, the CEO of Responsible Travel, suggests we should draw inspiration from Germany: “We could make rail more affordable by copying Germany’s unlimited domestic rail and bus travel for a monthly €58 (£49) subscription – which has significantly increased lower-carbon rail travel.

“This could be funded by a tax on aviation fuel – which is currently untaxed. This would raise £3bn over and above Air Passenger Duty. Some of this could also be used to help decarbonise aviation.”

I frequently hear grumbles that aviation is scapegoated by environmentalists while other industries (fashion, agriculture) get less heat, which is probably true. I also hear the argument that domestic aviation is important for business. But these arguments distract from what should be a black-and-white issue.

Domestic aviation is a grossly carbon-intensive mode of transport, and improving air links around the UK will only detract from longer-term ambitions to improve our slow, overpriced rail network.