Thanks, only called Miami Oceanic twice on two 100nm water flights to close FPLs before landing, the rest of flights were too low and short to call anyone, hope I don’t get charged flying at 500ft-1000ft (apart from taxi drivers who hear engine noise and come to the airport 
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Well, after a long time the lower house has now debated the legislation and it appears that GA below 5700 kg is largely exempt. The work of the GA lobby organisations who presented a united front against this madness seems to have prevailed, at least at that level.
Above 5700 kg things do get quite massive however, it is not the 500 francs as said before but between 500 and 5000 per person in a biz jet.
Also airline tickets will be taxed massively. If Switzerland should stay the only country to impose such massive taxes on airline tickets, the future appears bleak for the airline industry in this country, given that lower cost alternative airports are available in driving distance outside. 30-120 CHF per ticket depending on class is quite massive. Will put the Swiss airline industry into a massive problem and keep off foreign airlines from operating here.
It is not final yet and there is still hope that the whole law will be killed by the population. Chances for that are not too bad as the law would also allow a massive tax in automotive fuels and heating oil, making life for every citizen much more expensive.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
30-120 CHF per ticket depending on class is quite massive. Will put the Swiss airline industry into a massive problem and keep off foreign airlines from operating here.
Quite comparable to the UK APD tax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Passenger_Duty
If it is a pan European thing where all countries ask the same amount roughly, it may be acceptable. If not, those countries which will forego ticket surcharges will get a lot of additional passengers…
There is a lot of speculation about the impact, but no serious data to substantiate.
Basel could get a big boost to the existing draw away from Zurich that already exists due to EasyJet. Other than that, I don’t see a big impact on regional traffic, other than perhaps extremely price-sensitive short-duration tourist trips such as weekends to London, Berlin, etc, etc or vacations to the Mediterranean hot-spots.
The biggest impact is likely to be rerouting intercontinental trips via other European airports to save the 90CHF difference. This is already happening to some extent due to the huge difference between pricing for direct flights from Switzerland vs from EU hubs.
Aren’t hub passengers changing planes exempt from this new tax? Which makes it even more absurd in my view, because airlines are already trying to sell non-direct flights cheaper than direct ones, although direct flights are better for the environment. This tax will make it even more expensive to take a direct flight.
Ideally there would be a pan-European tax which depends on the distance flown. Short distance flights, say below 500 km, should be taxed massively, so as to discourage them as far as possible. Better to take a train. If aircraft below 5,7t are exempt, it could also be a boon to GA. Long distance should again be subject to severe taxes, because those flights are especially harmful to the environment. The typical European holiday flights from N. Europe to the Mediterranean should probably be subject to the lowest taxes.
The whole Covid-19 crisis has shown that the majority of business travel via CAT is probably unnecessary and many meetings can simply be held online instead.
Of course, concurrently with making airline flights in Europe more expensive, a massive investment in rail links is necessary to have a viable, eco-friendly alternative. I’m sad that due to NIMBYs and naysayers, we don’t have a transcontinental network of Maglev trains in place (yet)
Maybe we should just ban all of aviation worldwide for 20 years, then come to the conclusion that its influence on climate was negligent and wonder what the h*ll people were thinking in those days…
Didn’t we just do that experiment for three months, with exactly the results you describe ? It will be ignored anyway.
MedEwok wrote:
Ideally there would be a pan-European tax which depends on the distance flown. Short distance flights, say below 500 km, should be taxed massively, so as to discourage them as far as possible. Better to take a train. If aircraft below 5,7t are exempt, it could also be a boon to GA..
This exists and is called Eurocontrol IFR charges. Below 2.3t is exempt but for no reason beyond supposed logistics.
