Anyone boarding a plane on a flight of less than 500 km will soon have to pay tax on their ticket. Through the “boarding tax”, the government wants to fight against the pollution of these flights. The tax is also expected to collect 30 million euros. There isn’t a lot of concrete information yet. What is the amount of the boarding tax and if it must be paid on each short flight: these modalities do not seem to be determined yet.

This is what makes the aviation industry nervous. “We are not against the tax, but it must not harm competition”, says Mikey Andres, spokesperson for Brussels Airlines. He thinks of passengers who make short trips and then switch to a long-haul flight. According to her, almost all travelers who travel from Brussels to Paris do so: they settle there during a trip to Africa. The company wants these transported passengers to remain tax-exempt. “This is also the case in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris or London,” says Andres. If those passengers also have to pay this tax, that traffic will move there. You therefore have no climatic advantage and our hub model is not suitable.

The Belgian aviation organization PATA says it is better to take such measures at European or even global level. At the same time, she argues for an investment of tax revenues in “greening the aviation sector”.