Air travel is cheap these days, allowing ordinary people to travel further. Some people say that airfare should be increased because this leads to environmental problems and reduce air pollution. In what extent do you agree or disagree.

Air travel is cheap these days, allowing ordinary people to travel further. Some people say that airfare should be increased because this leads to environmental problems and reduce air pollution. Do you think that raising airfares would help reduce air pollution? In what extent do you agree or disagree. 

Technological development has made travelling by air affordable. This has encouraged masses to  make use of this medium. The trend has helped boost business of airlines, and inspired them to increase frequency of flights. Frequent flying means burning more and more fossil fuel, and generating more pollution. This has raised an alarm among a sizeable section of environmentalists, who feel that keeping pollution down is very important. Some have started suggesting that raising the air-tariff would help a lot, while some hold a contrary  view.

Some experts feel that raising the air travel fare could help reduce pollution, as increased air ticket fare would make travelling by air unaffordable for the masses, because the expenditure incurred on air tickets would be beyond the reach of many. Reduced crowds would  force the airlines to scale down operations significantly, which would in-turn, lead to significant drop in the rate of release of pollutants into the environment.

On the contrary, some people feel that raising the tariff and cost of air tickets would prove ineffective, because  most people use this medium to travel to distant destinations, where using other mediums of movement is impossible and literally impractical. Raising air travel tariff would only affect the travelers financially, but they would not abandon travelling by air.

Besides a compulsion to take a flight to distant locations, this medium has become a habit for many for e.g. in some countries like USA, people prefer taking a flight rather by boarding a train or a greyhound bus, because they have got used to this routine.

In conclusion, I feel that raising air fares cannot help in reducing the environmental pollution. The need of the hour is to develop such technologies which help in reducing the release of pollutants into air.