Campaign against Climate Change

We do not need to tackle RyanAir because Michael O'Leary is just digging himself into a big hole and the Independent provided him with a timely shovel. The biggest mistake he made was criticising the establishment's widely respected economist Nic Stern. Perhaps other papers might have chosen not to print those remarks.

Like so many others he's just trying to pass the buck for climate change. Unfortunately for O'Leary, Richard Branson was saying only a week earlier (R4) that the government should discourage all short haul flights where there was a rail alternative (e.g. by Virgin Train) but travelling long haul (e.g. by Virgin Atlantic) was perfectly ok. Branson didn't mention cows or nuclear power and his arguments compared to O'Leary have some credibility.

The great pity is that Michael O'Leary has grown his business on the back of very cheap fares. Going forward, the government needs to set the total cost of each flight to be high enough to discourage us all from flying. But O'Leary wants to get the total cost of each flight as low as possible to continue to grow his business. There is not much opportunity for reconciliation. Every time O'Leary reduces his ticket prices, the government should (if it were able to do so) increase air travel taxes and charges; that probably keeps him awake at night.

A few months ago Michael O'Leary make a great fuss about the increased security measures at UK airports and was (and maybe still is) trying to get compensation from the government. But having people queue for hours at airports is just the kind of thing that puts people off flying. We need more of it. One of the arguments about taxing air travel is that the rich still carry on flying - not if they have to queue for 4 hours for every flight.