First let's tax Trump's private jet. Frequent flyers next.

The Scottish Greens last week got personal in their push for the introduction of a tax on private jet users. Rather than focus on the many anonymous private jet passengers, they targeted in on one, a US Presidential candidate, former president and occasional visitor to a Scotland he has been known to call “home”. 

Yes, you've guessed it. Such a tax could raise £250,000, we were told, every time Donald Trump visits Scotland.  It could also, applied to all private jet users, raise enough money, say the Greens, to pay for the removal of peak rail travel. 

As MSP Ross Greer put it: “A private jet tax would raise money for our public services but its real aim would be to keep the super-rich and their destructive toys on the ground. It would of course have the added bonus of keeping the notoriously tight and cash-strapped Donald J Trump out of Scotland. That's a gift you couldn't even begin to put a price tag on.”

This private jet levy would represent a new ‘super rate’ of Air Departure Tax (the planned but not yet introduced Scottish replacement for Air Passenger Duty), for private jet passengers.

This would be pitched at 10 percent above the current top rate of the new tax, which will also have bands of duty for different distances of flights. 

The Scottish Greens' calculations for Trump run thus: “The distance between Scotland and Trump’s Mar A Lago home in Florida puts it in Band B for Air Passenger Duty, currently set at £581 per passenger at the ‘Higher’ rate. A new Super Rate which reflects the huge damage private jets do to the climate could be set at £5,800. With Trump’s Boeing 757 capable of carrying 43 passengers, a flight to Scotland at this rate would result in a £249,400 fee at the point of departure back to the US.”

Jet taking off (Image: Newsquest)

Private jets are, quite rightly, a good target for tax - especially as the super-rich have such outsized carbon footprints. As Ross Greer puts it “a billionaire uses 820 times as much CO2 as the average person in the UK”.

But it’s not only these private jet users that are making an outsized contribution to emissions. There is also the slightly more common beast, the frequent flyer, which en masse, though not individually, is a still more major source of emissions. 

To put this into perspective, in Europe, private jets, according to a 2023 Greenpeace report, emitted 5.3 million tonnes in the three years leading up to its publication. In 2023 the total emissions from flights from European airports was 164.85 million tonnes - leaving at least 160 million tonnes still emitted even after private jets are taken away.

According to a report by the climate charity Possible, in the UK 70% of flights are taken by 15% of people. If we assume this pattern is similar across Europe, it becomes clear that this frequent flyer block is driving much of these emissions. 

Private jet users may be the worst culprits, but there are many more frequent flyers. 

A blog published by the New Economics Foundation earlier this year, advocating a frequent flyer levy, observed that “pre-pandemic, around 20% of individuals in the top fifth of earners flew abroad four or more times in a year”. 

It also noted that “crude estimates suggest flying in a business-class seat creates between 2.6 and 4.3 times more CO2 per passenger than a similar trip economy class. per person" 

Yet disappointingly the frequent flyer levy - a tax that would mean that the first round-trip flight taken in a year would be charged with low or no departure tax, but taxes would increase for subsequent flights -  still seems out of reach. 

Donald Trump (Image: AP)

READ MORE:

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So when will we see it?  Scotland’s Air Departure Tax has the potential to deliver a frequent flyer system, but the Scottish Government awaits Westminster’s permission to allow an exemption for lifeline island flights, considered vital to making the system work. 

Meanwhile, what’s particularly shocking for those like myself who fret over the emissions produced by a a once-a-year short-haul family holiday, or opt for a train, is the continued existence of frequent flyer programmes which encourage regular fliers to take to the air for points and rewards. 

A recent Carbon Choices blog by climate campaigner Neil Kitching has looked into the pattern and called for governments to "review and regulate frequent flyer programmes to ensure they do not incentivise more flights".

“Changes to frequent flyer programmes," it said, "could help companies to decrease their business travel costs, would help businesspeople to avoid any potential conflicts of interest and would be a win for the environment.”

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Also advocating for change was a 2023 report, Pointless: The Climate Impact of Frequent Flyer Status, which examined British Airways and Virgin Atlantic’s frequent flyer programmes, and found that flying enough to qualify for programme membership requires emissions between seven and 112 times higher than the average UK air travel foot print.  Those with 'Gold Status', it said, are responsible for emissions over 33 times higher than the average UK air travel footprint. 

Still more extreme is 'Lifetime membership status'. which it noted "can require a carbon footprint" that is "34 times the lifetime per person share of the remaining carbon budget for a 50% chance of limiting global warming to 1.5ºC".

Private jets, in other words, must just be the start.  Donald Trump, like Taylor Swift, and the current cohort of celebrity private jet trippers, is just the tip of a bigger iceberg that ought to melt before the West Antarctica ice shelves do.

What’s needed is a broader cultural change and a shift towards a world in which flying isn’t just something you do to score points.