Switzerland to introduce a 500 CHF tax per private flight

The US has a much more active volunteer GA sector with private owners offering free flights for eg cancer patients, injured armed forces personnel, pets, disaster relief and environmental surveying. I think the regulatory environment here might make that more difficult, does anyone know. But some good publicity around these kind of operations might help.

This belongs into the Climate Change thread but actually by far the biggest damage to the environment are the millions who drive an hour or two to work every day, consuming a full tank of petrol (often in some 4×4 “tank”) every 1 or 2 days. Even if you do 2 holidays to Greece and 4 ski holidays each year, you still don’t match the average commuter’s fuel burn.

Presumably nobody in Switzerland drives any distance to work? And Swiss govt officials don’t fly on govt business?

We have been doing search missions and fire watching for as long as I can remember. These are done by flying clubs. The state pays all the expenses, but it is strictly volunteer. Nobody gets payed. Well, if you happen to be a commercial pilot and have the right equipment then you will of course get payed, but that’s another story, ordinary SAR missions and firefighting. Works just fine within EASA regs, and if it don’t there really is no problem, it can simply be defined as “state operations”.

Peter wrote:

by far the biggest damage to the environment are the millions who drive an hour or two to work every day

Totally. When people ask me what I’m doing for the environment, the first thing I say is that I don’t commute.

That and not having children ;-)

Snoopy wrote:

Maybe I misunderstand you but the fear of private jets being used elsewhere (be it CH or UK) is a tad unrealistic, isn’t it?

Yea, actually I was referring to the UK, where according to the Guardian their prospective prime minister has plans to ban biz jets altogether. That is a step up from the 500 franc charge the Swiss threaten. Banning biz jets totally would certainly have a signal effect to businesses in the UK: A such ballant act of banning high finance customers from using their jets would certainly tell those people how welcome they are in general.

That the Swiss proposed charge would not have any effect on biz jets is clear, it would though be catastrophic at small GA.

Airborne_Again wrote:

Maybe he is repeatedly described like that, but if anyone seriously believes it is true, then I think (s)he has misunderstood Lenin…

I would think that might be true of the man himself as well.

Characteristically, the newspapers misquote a report which editors have hardly bothered to read.

This perfectly reasonable proposal is to ban all “fossil-fuel private aircrafts” (sic) from “using UK airports”, and I can’t see anything wrong with that. I mean, who wants to waste good Bushwheel rubber at UK airports anyway?

Here is an interesting article by my favorite newspaper NZZ, which is unfortunately not available without registering:
Die Grünen standen anfänglich ganz rechts. Dass «öko» dereinst mit «links» assoziiert würde, war damals nicht vorstellbar

To resume it in short for those who aren’t subscribed (which I can only recommend, as serious journalism needs our support), or who can’t read English:

• The Green movement in Switzerland was originally started by right-wing politicians, who were especially opposed to immigration as it would burden the natural resources of the country
• Until the late 1980’s, it wasn’t obvious that being “green” would be associated with being “on the left”
• Most conservationists of the first hour were either bourgeois, anti-communist or conservatives, often only fighting punctually against projects like the construction of highways, power plants or noise
• The whole environmentalist movement has been composed of individualists with sometimes strongly opposing views on most political topics for a long time
• The idea to transform the green movement into an anti-capitalist movement has been uttered already in the beginning of the 80s, but has been fought by many original greens. But some greens e.g. in Germany have for a long time been admirers of Ghaddafi (who touted himself as the leader of a new worldwide “green movement”) and Kim Il Sung
• The Swiss greens have divided themselves into “watermelon greens” (green on the outside, red inside) and “cucumber greens” (green on the outside, green on the inside) at the end of the 80s
• In the 90s, many left-wing parties dissolve and the green party picks up many of their former members
• This leads to another split in 2003 into the green liberal party and the green party

So there are definitely people who see the green movement as a means to an end, to radicalise the masses in fear of the end of the world, in order to finally achieve communist goals. I am relatively hopeful though that with the Swiss political system, these attempts will not succeed, but that won’t mean doing nothing for the climate or the environment (such as in the US).

Rwy20 wrote:

Here is an interesting article by my favorite newspaper NZZ, which is unfortunately not available without registering:
Die Grünen standen anfänglich ganz rechts. Dass «öko» dereinst mit «links» assoziiert würde, war damals nicht vor

I could read it without registering.

But I don’t know how relevant it is today if in the early 1980s the Swiss greens were right-wing and some German greens admired Ghaddaffi and Kim-Il Sung.

Rwy20 wrote:

I am relatively hopeful though that with the Swiss political system, these attempts will not succeed

Well, I hope you are right of course. However, if the Minder postulate was Strike 1 in a movement to destroy private aviation in Switzerland, Strike 2 has been launched by the Department of Transport (UVEK) in a very surprising move yesterday.

It is well known in this forum as well as elsewhere that Zurich Airport has long been hoping to get rid of GA (up to 737-Biz jets) for good, as they are of the somewhat deluded opinion that an international airport like LSZH should be exclusively used by scheduled and charter passenger flights of 50 pax and more. Biz Aviation and small GA should move away. For a couple of years now, there has been an effort to re-certify the military airbase of Dubendorf (LSMD) to the task: It is close to LSZH, it has a decent runway, it has IFR, it has more than enough space. The idea was that Dubendorf would be used as a “4th runway” for Zurich to handle all small GA and Biz Jets up to a certain size. The project had been quite advanced but did face massive opposition of the local councils who wish to sell or rent the land (which is not even theirs) for industry and commerce.

Now the department of transport has published a press release, which has stopped short of withdrawing their support to the project but which questions the use of Dubendorf as an airfield from a safety and legal view. It is not that all these things have not been explored to death in the past, but so far the confederation was pro Dubendorf as they knew if it fails, they will kill general aviation in the Zurich area for good. Now the UVEK withdraws their support.

To say that the proponents of the project, some of which have sunk quite huge amounts of money into it already, are stunned is an understatement. The reaction of most people I talked to since the breaking news yesterday is that this move has killed the project for good. Therefore, when Zurich dismantles the current GAC and finally succeeds in banning GA for most part (they retain about 5 parking position for biz jets on the western apron), there will be no airport available in the whole Zurich area which has the requirements such as airport of entry (non Schengen), IFR, night, hard runway e.t.c. In short, while there are some grass fields around, Zurich will cease to exist for general aviation.

Thinking of it, maybe this is already strike 3, strike one having been the proposal for a new airspace structure which would close the airfields of Speck, Lommis, Birrfeld and some others due to the very low lower limits and would obviously also have given massive problems to Dubendorf.

In any case, the future for GA in the Zurich area has again been put under masssive question. And with the socialist minister of transport in charge, who while officially disproving of the Minder postulate (500 francs per movement) only did so because she felt it was not effective enough to destroy GA fully, we may expect rather interesting times ahead of us…