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Comment by wut42 | Hacker News Reader

While the reason is honorable, I can't help but think this is an attack on poor/middle class people. Traveling by train in France is quite expensive, and very annoying some times (I live in a lost country-side, and if I want to travel to my parents, it's a three to four train ride, taking about 8 to 10 hours). Ok, plane wouldn't help in most cases either, but the train offering got a lot gutted over the years and it's not going to improve.

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I’m French, I was a poor student, so I didn’t pay for the train. Instead I took car rides (blablacar) or bus rides. Not a freaking plane!

I never really bought this argument. Poor people aren't taking regular flights or driving SUV's. Climate change is a problem caused by the consumption habits of the wealthy, not the poor.

Banning domestic flights won’t stop the habits of the wealthy; they fly private personal planes. What the ban likely will cause is an increase in the cost of travel, which hurts middle class people.

Flights can be quite cheap in Europe if you can take a low cost airline: ryanair, wizzair etc.

They won't connect every city, and connection flights are a no-no, but direct point to point flights are cheaper than anything else. Cheap flights across Europe is what allows a lot of low wage migrants to find seasonal work, students and young workers to travel and visit the cities etc.

The rich fly in expensive airlines, not with ryanair. Check this out: Paris to Bratislava, round trip for 80 bucks https://www.ryanair.com/us/en/trip/flights/select?adults=1&t...

Paris to Bratislava by train is 100 bucks one way (also taking much longer) https://www.raileurope.com/en-us/destinations/paris-bratisla...

Fuel taxes tend to hit rural people pretty hard, because they drive a lot of miles and most of it is non-optional. If you live in Paris you can just decide not to drive, which won't work as well for you in rural France.

This post is about flights, not fuel taxes

They were talking about consumption taxes, SUVs being an oblique reference to fuel consumption, and I’m pointing out that these sometimes are a burden on the rural poor who are least positioned to pay.

You probably aren't aware in Europe flights can be like 20E. The cheapest flight I ever had was London to Madrid for 3 pounds.

Poor people will take the Macron coaches instead of the disbanded slower trains.

Great progress ...

Are airplane rides actually cheap, or are they heavily subsidized?

Often they are cheap because airlines open their bases in exotic places and the regional local govs, who invested heavily in an airport as part of muscle flexing, subsidize the carriers to avoid having a ghost airport. Modus operandi or Ryanair for a while. (But also connections between major airports in EU can be cheap if booked in advance).

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