As governments increasingly target domestic air travel across Europe, how are airports responding to this challenge? Catch up with the conversation from our latest aviation webinar, in which OAG's Chief Analyst, John Grant and Partner at Midas Aviation, Deirdre Fulton were joined by Wilco Sweijen, Airline Partnerships Director at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.

The webinar started with a look at some of the new rules (since 2020) governing domestic travel in key markets across Europe. These include higher taxation on shorter air journeys in Belgium and Germany and bans on shorter flights where a feasible train alternative is available in Spain, France and Austria.

Bringing in the data, the team then looked at how domestic aviation markets in Europe have changed in recent times. 

Over the past five years Spain and Italy have seen an increase in domestic air capacity, while Norway has remained pretty level. The UK's domestic air capacity has fallen by 11%,  while big changes have come in the French and German markets, where domestic capacity has reduced by 27% and 45% respectively.

With this considered, the conversation moved to the modes of travel passengers will take as an alternative to going by air. While everyone is united in a desire to improve sustainability and indeed profitability, there are still issues to be ironed out with inter-modal travel, including train capacity, lack of IATA codes and the compatibility of ticketing systems, to name a few.

Watch the full recording of the webinar below to see how the panel think some of these problems can be resolved, and to hear suggestions to make travel more sustainable that could be considered in addition to replacing planes with trains. 

Watch Webinar: Trains for Planes

Download webinar slides

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