Aviation is responsible for at least 3.5% of global warming, and demand is predicted to rise rapidly over the next few decades. To reverse this trend, air travel demand will need to be managed. An important question is: ‘who would be affected by air travel demand reduction policies’? The answer to that question largely depends on who is participating in air travel, and how unequally it is distributed. Existing analysis suggests that participation in air travel in the UK is highly unequal and driven by richer, highly educated and urban households. However, so far little is known about how these patterns of inequality have changed over time – has air travel participation increased among low income households, e.g. due to the rise of low-cost carriers and ‘normalisation’ of air travel as a social practice? Would these groups therefore now be more affected by flight taxes or frequent flyer levies? To address these questions, this paper examines trends in air travel inequality between 2001 and 2018 in the UK based on two representative surveys, providing the first micro-level analysis of air travel inequality over time for this country. We find that while disadvantaged groups have contributed to the expansion of air travel over the past two decades, they remain far less likely to be affected by air travel demand management policies because air travel inequality is still at a very high level. These findings challenge common discourses that present air travel as a widespread norm, and demand management policies as socially unfair.

航空业至少对全球变暖负责 3.5%，预计未来几十年需求将迅速上升。为了扭转这一趋势，需要管理航空旅行需求。一个重要的问题是：“谁会受到航空旅行需求减少政策的影响”？这个问题的答案很大程度上取决于谁参与了航空旅行，以及航空旅行的分布不均。现有的分析表明，在英国，航空旅行的参与度是高度不平等的，并且是由富裕、受过高等教育的城市家庭推动的。然而，到目前为止，人们对这些不平等模式如何随时间发生变化知之甚少——低收入家庭的航空旅行参与率是否有所增加，例如 由于低成本航空公司的兴起和作为社会实践的航空旅行“正常化”？因此，这些群体现在是否会更受飞行税或飞行常客税的影响？为了解决这些问题，本文根据两项具有代表性的调查研究了英国 2001 年至 2018 年间航空旅行不平等的趋势，提供了该国航空旅行不平等随时间推移的首次微观分析。我们发现，虽然弱势群体在过去二十年中为航空旅行的扩张做出了贡献，但他们受航空旅行需求管理政策影响的可能性仍然小得多，因为航空旅行不平等仍处于非常高的水平。这些发现挑战了将航空旅行视为普遍规范并将管理政策视为社会不公平的常见话语。