The Scottish Government is planning a new air travel tax to cut emissions, just days after pulling the plug on a key climate change target.
Ministers are expected to hike the cost of domestic air travel through taxation, potentially pricing Scots off of planes and onto trains.
Plans have previously been considered by ministers in Holyrood. In 2018, legislation was drawn up for a Scottish air departure tax (ADT), however a disagreement with Westminster over exemptions for flights from the Highlands and Islands meant the plans never took off.
But with the UK Government set to change hands, if polls are to believed, later this year, there are fresh hopes for the tax to be rolled out.
Currently, air passenger duty across the UK rangers from £7 to £78.
A plan to cut emissions
Last month, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) warned that improvements to cutting emissions in "aviation and shipping sectors needs to increase by a factor of nine in the nine years from 2021 to 2030".
It added that "there is no strategy for decarbonising aviation in Scotland", and recommended that the Scotland's ADT be "implemented as soon as possible".
The SNP's net zero secretary Mairi McAllan told The Scotsman she hopes change will be forthcoming under a new government, to allow for the implementation of ADT.
"Currently, we will not be able to achieve what we want to achieve with the approach that’s been taken to climate with the incumbent UK government," she said.
"“I’m pragmatic, I keep wanting to see progress. I will call on a new UK government, which I think is likely to be Labour, to change their position. But that’s up to them to deliver it."
Speaking in November, Mike Kane, shadow aviation minister, suggested his party could tweak ADT as a "watercooler tax to dampen demand at Heathrow".
"“I am sure on the horizon we will look at how we allow our regional airports to compete in such an environment where they are disadvantaged at the moment," he added.