Obama Wants to Raise Your Air Ticket Prices

Air travel can be a frustrating experience. Flight delays, lost luggage, bag fees, squished seating, crying babies, security lines — it’s enough to make your blood boil. And if the United Nations and the Obama administration move forward with new regulations they’re proposing, the flying experience will become even more painful.

We’re talking about regulations meant to combat global warming. The U.N.’s International Civil Aviation Organization has proposed more stringent emissions standards — and what amounts to new fuel efficiency mandates — for airplanes delivered in 2028 and thereafter. The regulations would require 2028 airplanes to use four percent less fuel than planes delivered in 2015.

The Environmental Protection Agency is already moving to adopt these regulations. It first proposed them last June and expects to publish the final rule this July.

Mandated efficiency will artificially drive up the purchase price of new airplanes. That leaves airlines with four choices: a) raise ticket prices, b) buy fewer new planes over a longer period of time, c) free up money elsewhere in the operation or d) all of the above.

All of these options are bad for flyers. Deferred acquisition means customers ride in increasingly aging equipment. Saving money elsewhere means cutting jobs, which means worse customer service — longer waits at the ticket counter, longer waits at the baggage carousel, more flight delays as the maintenance demands of aging equipment mount.

The first question that should be asked of any proposed regulation is: Is this really necessary? In this case, it’s not.

The airline industry already has plenty of incentive to reduce fuel use. Fuel costs are one of the industry’s largest expenses, accounting for nearly 30 percent of its operating costs. Airlines are well aware of the benefits of lowering those costs; in fact, some are currently enjoying record profits because of low oil prices.

They’d like nothing better than to reduce their fuel costs even more — through improved fuel efficiency. It would boost their bottom lines and give them an edge against less efficient competitors.

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Airplanes are already one of the most energy-efficient modes of transportation. The Federal Aviation Administration says they move more people per gallon than cars or transit buses — and they move them a lot further, faster.

Air travel today is 70 percent more fuel-efficient than it was in the 1960s. From 2004 to 2012, airlines increased energy efficiency by over 24 percent. They’ve accomplished this largely by using lighter materials, engine control systems and winglets to improve aerodynamics.

But the drive to save on fuel goes much further than that. For instance, to reduce fuel-sucking weight, airlines have reduced the amount of ice carried on board for complimentary drinks. Companies willing to sweat details like that to reduce fuel consumption certainly don’t need additional “motivation” from the federal government or any international body.

Whenever government forces efficiency measures on businesses, it takes away choices, or at the very least, overrides them. The proposed government mandate makes fuel-efficiency Job One, and customer service a distant second. As is the case with automobile fuel-efficiency standards, they may also force design changes that reduce passenger comfort and safety.

The proposed regulation may be just the beginning. This is the first time the government is proposing emissions standards for commercial aircraft. And if similar efforts are any indication, this will only whet the appetite for more regulation. Already, many environmental activist organizations are deriding the proposed standards as being too weak. A lawyer from Earthjustice called the mandate “embarrassingly low.”

The White House fully endorses the proposed regulation, claiming that it offers health as well as climatic benefits. The EPA has argued that airplane carbon dioxide emissions “endanger the public health and welfare of current and future generations.”

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But this regulation has nothing to do with protecting human health. Carbon dioxide is colorless, odorless and non-toxic. These plane regulations are predicated solely on carbon dioxide’s alleged impact on the climate.

Will these regulations have any meaningful impact on global temperatures? No. Airline emissions account for only two percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Even if the entire industrialized world were to cut its CO2 emissions drastically now — in every industrial sector — by the end of this century it would reduce global temperature by no more than a few tenths of a degree Celsius.

The proposed airplane standards are just one link in the chain of regulations that make up the administration’s global warming agenda. Regulations on new and existing power plants, oil and gas extraction, automobiles and trucks, also restrict the use of carbon-based fuels — and all would drive up energy costs and cost consumers trillions of dollars.

The proposed commercial airline regulations doubtless gladden the hearts of the Hollywood stars and politicians who take their private jets while telling average Americans to walk, ride bikes and buy hybrids. But the regulation will only drive up the costs and frustrations of flying, while doing nothing to combat global warming.

Nicolas Loris is the Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies.