what we really need is a specific tax on ALL flights, earmarked to combat global warming.  I see (and applaud!) your point, but a tax aimed directly at the pocketbooks of the most affluent and influential segment of society seems unlikely to become reality.

There's an international aviation tax that pays for drug purchases in poor countries, no?  How'd that happen, while a tax directly related to aviation's ill effects didn't?

Okay, so I collect frequent flier miles. I've cut back on my air travel, but I still fly enough to earn the occasional free flight.

When you book a flight using frequent flier miles, you still have to pay all the airport taxes. So sure, they're not taxed as income, but they're not entirely tax exempt. Given that the most practical way to introduce a carbon tax on flights is through an airport tax, you'd catch all these free flights too.

BTW I couldn't help noticing that the original article pulls the usual journalist's trick of trotting out large numbers, but without ever comparing against a baseline. For example, we're told about the size of the free miles liabilities, and the number of miles currently unclaimed, but without a comparison with airline revenues and passenger miles, these numbers are pretty useless.

Huh?  Last I checked there are hundreds of airports but only a few companies that make kerosene (aviation fuel).  I'm guessing that it's a lot more efficient to tax fuel, and it would then apply the tax in the right proportion to use ...

"An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is someone who is afraid that the optimist is right."

Okay, yes, a kerosene tax may be simpler and more effective.

But I'd still argue that an airport tax has a number of advantages:

 - It can be applied unilaterally. A tax on aircraft fuel would need international agreements on how and where to collect it. Airport taxes can be applied by each country without the need for a treaty.

 - It will be more visible to the flying public, rather than buried in the ticket price

 - The mechanism already exists for implementing it, given that just about every commercial airport already collects departure tax of some sort.

 - If it's charged at a flat rate per departure, then the burden falls disproportionately onto shorter flights, which is where there is most potential for reducing demand, because alternatives are available.

But I'm just thinking out loud here...