'That doesn't reflect the price for the planet': France wants to put a stop to mega low airfares

France's Transport Minister has said he will propose that the EU brings in a minimum price on flights to reduce carbon emissions.

Clément Beaune says he wants to "fight against social and environmental dumping" and that "€10 plane tickets isn't possible anymore", referring to low-cost airline fares. He said a mega low ticket price "doesn't reflect the price for the planet."

But are more expensive flights the solution to reducing aviation's carbon footprint?

"Anything that makes airlines pay a fair share of the environmental cost that they create is a good thing", says Jon Worth, travel expert and founder of Trains for Europe campaign.

"But we should be dealing with frequent flyers and this does not deal with them. It might reduce nice city weekends for some people but it's not going to stop or reduce this regular flying elite."

In France, 2% of people take half of all flights, according to research published by the climate campaign group Possible. 15% of Brits take 70% of flights and 8% of the Dutch take 42%.

Overall, 37% of Europeans have never travelled outside their own country, according to a 2014 European survey. This statistic does not directly relate to air travel but gives an idea of how many Europeans fly.

On average, European train tickets are twice as expensive as flights, according to a Greenpeace report from July. 

Only 12 train lines were found to be fast, reliable and cheaper than flights, over the 112 most important routes analysed by Greenpeace.

In May this year, France brought in a ban on some domestic flight routes. Flights that could be replaced by train journeys taking less than 2.5 hours were affected. But due to caveats, such as trains not running late enough at night, the ban only applies to 3 flight