6 ★ FT Weekend 19 October/20 October 2019Travel
F
irst it suggested a tax on
frequent flyers. Now one of its
reports is calling for a ban on
air miles. The Committee on
Climate Change, which
advises the UK government, is trying to
get frequent flyers to spend more time
at home.
In an independentreport for the
committee, Richard Carmichael of
Imperial College London says airline
loyalty schemes encourage people to
fly more and that “frequent flyers
engage in additional flights to maintain
their privileged traveller status (so-
called ‘mileage runs’ or ‘status runs’)”.
I don’t know anyone who goes on
flights just to up their air miles,
although one commenter under mylast
column laimed to know some. Most ofc
us, I suspect, fly when we have to. There
are flyers who flaunt their cards, but
the rest of us value the shorter security
queues, the chance to have breakfast in
a lounge and to board before all the
overhead luggage space is gone.which, for the traveller, has the happy
effect of boosting the air miles.
As to where you sit on the plane,
most companies have rules on that
too. Business class is treasured largely
because it is easier on the back and legs
than economy, which has become
hellishly crammed.
The extra loyalty points that come
from travelling in the better parts of
the plane are a bonus.
Would banning loyalty schemes
reduce the flying that travellers do?
I doubt it. Budget-driven corporate
travel freezes and the desire to spend
more time with family are more
powerful reasons for staying home.
And the leisure trips you supposedly
get from frequent-flyer points are often
hard to find.
Would a ban on frequent flyer
schemes be possible? No government
could actually do it alone. Air miles
programmes are international; you can
join a loyalty scheme from anywhere.
Most airlines are also members ofalliances, which share points. If the
UK government banned loyalty
programmes, a UK-based British
Airways scheme member could simply
sign up for the programme run by one
of BA’s partners, such as American
Airlines or Cathay Pacific.
Carmichael points to the example of
Norway, which banned frequent flyer
schemes from 2002 to 2013. But
Norway’s ban was just on domestic
flights — and its aim was not
environmental protection.
The Norwegian government was
worried about the lack of competition
on its domestic air routes and felt
that SAS, the dominant carrier, was
using its loyalty scheme to keep
competitors out. It lifted the ban in
2013 because new airlines had
entered the market and lowered
ticket prices. The ban succeeded in
increasing the number of flights, not
reducing them.
Norway is pioneering a more
interesting attack on air miles gainedthrough business travel: taxing them.
The principle is fair: points you get
while travelling for work are an
employee benefit like any other.
Since January, Norwegian companies
have been required to tell the tax
authorities what air miles their
employees have totted up.
Norwegian companies have accepted
the principle, but have protested that
they can’t put it into practice. The
airlines won’t tell them what points
employees have been awarded. And
they can’t separate points staff have
gained through business from those
they got from personal travel. That’s
why other governments have shied
away from taxing air miles.
There are other ways of addressing
frequent flyers’ contribution to climate
change. This column will return to
them. But a ban on air miles? It’s not
going to fly.[email protected]; @Skapinker
More columns at ft.com/michael-skapinkerBusiness travellers are usually bound
by company travel policies. These
often specify a particular airline, which
is handy, it is true, for racking up the
points. Sometimes the company
instructs us to take a less direct route
to our destination because it is cheaper,Norway is pioneering
a more interesting
attack on air milesgained through business
Michael Skapinker travel: taxing themBusiness travel
those roadblocks that was as close to
problematic as I ever want to get.Back in Caracas, the British ambassa-
dor had asked me, quite firmly, not to
encourage people to visit, and I should
respect that. Danger arrives at the speed
of a motorcycle, and in an instant you
can become the FCO’s problem. But per-
haps there are ways to work the edges.
What people in both countries need — in
the short term — is hard currency.
One morning, late in my Venezuela
trip, a small plane heaved me into the
hot morning sky above Caracas’
Maiquetía airport. For 20 minutes,
I was bewitched by the rosary hanging
from the co-pilot’s steering column, and
then we descended over a patchwork
of keys, water colour-coding the
depths, and with a great roar of the tur-
bo-props arrived on the Los Roques
archipelago. Sand streets led away from
the runway through brightly painted
houses andinns.
A 16 sq m cluster of 350 islands, coral
stems, mangroves and sand spits, Los
Roques is as safe as houses. The only
mugging takes place offshore where
pelicans crash into the sea only to be
set upon by boobies trying to steal
their catch.
I went fly-fishing, for which the
islands are famous. Carlos Quiaro took
me out on a boat called The World is
Yours. We were hunting bonefish, which
the Venezuelans callpez ratón(mouse
fish). We sliced round the edge of ragged
isles and disembarked on shallows,
wading calf deep in search of the
dark shapes.
Carlos’ operation was running at 5 per
cent of capacity, while many others had
shut down. His boss Ramon told me:
“The guides take turns to take people
out, just so there is some sort of income.”
On my way back to my inn that
evening, I stopped for a beer and was
joined by Yohanny Ruela, one of the
owners of a kite surfing operation, Play
Los Roques. They too are struggling
for visitors. “People come here because
the conditions are perfect,” she said.
“We surf between the keys. As they
go, they see the fish below. They even
see sharks.”
She paused and looked out at the
setting sun. “We love it here so we’re
sitting tight and hoping. But we’re living
off our savings.”L
ife found a way up to the silent
cannons of the Citadelle
Laferrière, arriving from the
valley below in a burst of
women’s laughter. From the
fortress’ parapets 3,000ft above Haiti’s
northern plain, all was visible too: small
farms, the city of Cap Haitien, tarry
plumes of smoke rising from barricades
of burning tyres.
The Citadelle was constructed by
slave-turned-king Henri Christophe in
the wake of the 1804 revolution that
gave birth to the Haitian nation. Henri
also built a grand palace below, Sans
Souci, which means “without cares”;
something that has rarely been true of
this extraordinary Caribbean nation.
The barricades were manifestations
of Haitians’ current despair: at a lack
of fuel, state corruption and a daily
life that is overwhelmingly difficult.
Around the country, banks were being
burnt and shops looted.
In the ruins of Sans Souci — it was
destroyed by a huge earthquake in 1842
— my girlfriend and I gazed on the colos-
sal wreck of Henri’s ambition. An eld-
erly man, passing by, stopped to laugh at
the rare visitors, nodding to the ruins
and mocking in Spanish. “Cosas de locos,”
he said. The things of madmen.
It’s the second time this year I’ve
found myself in a place the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office website has
advised me not to go. I wouldn’t nor-
mally mention it — sightseeing amidst
crisis is not a good look — but I’ve been
troubled by voices since. Not those of
the politicians, soldiers and aid workers,
but of the other people, the ones trying
to get by.The earlier trip was in February, to
Venezuela. Juan Guaidó, having
declared himself president and gained
the support of the US, EU and much of
Latin America, was trying to bring aid
over the border from Colombia. This
against the wishes of Nicolás Maduro,
Hugo Chávez’s heir, who remained, and
remains, ensconced in Miraflores, the
presidential palace.
I was visiting a friend, staying in the
upmarket neighbourhood of Altamira.
On an afternoon hike up the Avila, a
mountain trail with views over Caracas,
a city that lies in the valley like a lake,
the slope echoed to shouts of “coño e’ tu
madre”, a filthy phrase Guaidó support-
ers have taken to yelling every time
someone mentions Maduro.
Feeling the responsibility (and
desire) to look around, I wanted
another view. Liliana Buitrago, who
works with women in the city’s exten-
sive barrios, offered to show me one,
grateful in troubled times for hard cur-
rency. Having seen the mausoleum of
South America’s liberator, Simón Bolí-
var, she took me to visit Chávez’s tomb.
There, having passed manned machine
gun nests, an old lady in military uni-
form showed us El Comandante’s child-
hood toys, weeping over his bicycle like
a nun over the bones of a saint.
The city looked tranquil beneath the
fort where Chávez is buried, calming the
tinnitus of my fear. But then, driving
down, Liliana cried out: “You’re lucky,
you’re about to see acollectivo.”
She had been trying to persuade me
the paramilitary groups are in reality
grassroots self-preservation societies. A
roar enveloped us, as did 40 armed men
on motorcycles. I slid deep into my seat
until they had gone.
We walked around the Teresa Carreño
theatre, a modernist masterpiece in the
city centre, chatted to Pablo Kalaka, a
Chilean famous for his murals who was
having coffee there, and went to the
Museum of Contemporary Art. Nothing
shows how gossamer thin the distance
between civilisation and chaos is as
viewing one of the world’s great collec-
tions of Picassos — 150 strong — in utter
solitude, because motorcycle gangs are
roaming outside.
At the cable car station that provides a
route up to the barrios where Liliana
often works, she apologised, and said
the shootings had been too bad of
late to visit. All at once, she looked des-
perately weary.
While separate reasons took me to the
two countries, there are connections,
both historic and modern, betweenFrom top: driving past barrios into
Caracas; a beachside restaurant on
Grand Roque in the Los Roques
archipelago —Getty Images; AlamyVenezuela and Haiti —
beyond their inclusion on the
FCO list. Bolívar visited Haiti
in 1815 to beg Alexandre
Pétion, one of the leaders of
Haiti’s revolution, for money
and troops to support his
struggle to clear South
America of colonialists.
Pétion was happy to provide,
so long as Bolívar promised
to end slavery in the territo-
ries he conquered.
This history, which proved
pivotal for an entire continent, is laid
out in Mupanah, a pantheon in Haiti’s
capital of Port au Prince. I turned
up there last month because my girl-
friend is doing research into “the role of
memory in Haitian literature”. Initially
I’d thought this hilariously obscure, but
no longer.
Vénoi Résius guided us round the rich
collection, including the gun with which
King Henri killed himself, reputedly
using a silver bullet. Then he pointed to
a 50lb lump of metal attached to shack-
les. “The overseers used to place those
weights on the heads of slave girls who
had aborted their babies,” he said.
Haiti’s vivid memories are written not
only in its novels and poetry, but on its
very walls. There are vast murals of therevolutionary heroes, but also, in Cre-
ole, the words: “This is a poetic city, no
more violence”. That one is giving way
to a stencil of a noose with the slogan,
“the money or the rope”, a reference to
thePetrocaribe scandal where Vene-
zuela gave Haiti cheap oil to super-
charge development, only for Haiti’s
politicians to steal the money.
Exhaustion with this situation is
everywhere. At the Centre d’Art, we run
into Yuuvensky Despeigues. He shows
me notepads he made as a child, filled to
the margins with thousands of obsessive
biro scrawlings. His parents were so
freaked out they took him to a psychia-
trist, but an artist suggested instead he
focus. Now he makes intricate and beau-
tiful paintings. He shows us one: it
depicts Death taking Haiti’s flag from
the living.
In the suburb of Mariani lives Didier
Dominique. He preserves the legacy of
his departed father-in-law Max Beau-
voir, Supreme Servitur of the voodoo
priesthood. Le Péristyle, his home, sits
among myriad species of trees, large
and small. The voodoo spirits — the loas
— are connected to these trees, some-
where between living in them and being
them. Beauvoir planted many himself,
often fertilising them with the umbilical
cord of a newborn child.
It was a voodoo ceremony — at Bois
Caiman in the country’s north (which
we failed to reach because of road-
blocks) — where the slave rebellion that
led to the Haitian revolution began.
Voodoo is a religion umbilically
attached to nature, a nature subse-
quently slashed and burned by dictators
who were concerned that the forests
contained not loas but guerrillas.
Over a lunch of ox killed in an earlier
sacrifice, Didier spoke of the role of voo-
doo, how it was a cure for both body and
mind. I asked about the magic: “Those
ceremonies are performed here, but I
don’t really get involved,” he said.
“Magic is powerful, but it’s not as power-
ful as organisation.” He raised his eye-
brows. “Of course, at Bois Caiman they
had both.”
Then he smiled; he might know his
voodoo, but he’s also a communist. As
he spoke, Haiti’s hidden systems and
networks seemed to appear out of the
humid air, and then disappear again.
What price is worth paying to meet
these people, and hear their stories? Ini/D E TA I L S
Aardvark McLeod(aardvarkmcleod.com) can
organise fly fishing on Los Roques.Campbell
Irvine(campbellirvine.com) offers travel
insurance for both Haiti and VenezuelaTravels in
the red zone
its warnings, the FCO quotes crime rates
and insecurity — and both Venezuela
and Haiti suffer terribly from both — but
the truly important figures are earnings
and inflation.
There is a terrible truth about coun-
tries lurching towards starvation: there
is plenty of food — including delicacies:
in Venezuela, steak, and, in Haiti, conch
— but only if you can pay.
Inflation has reduced the average per-
son’s income to $2.50 a day in both
countries, making it impossible to buy
enough to eat, even one of the fly-
covered goat hearts being sold in the
mud of Cap Haitien’s market.
We put up at the Cormier Beach hotel
and had dinner with Jean-Bernard
Simonnet, the owner. We ate chicken
djon-djon, made with mushrooms Haiti
is renowned for, and looked into eyes
also showing exhaustion with the situa-
tion. In the early days Jean-Bernard’s
hotel — a little worn but perfectly boho
with its swinging lanterns and whisper-ing sea — was the hideout of stars. Mick
Jagger set up here for a week, apparently
disconcerting the staff with his excesses.
Now those staff are working half
hours, as Jean-Bernard tries to keep the
hotel afloat. He told stories you won’t
hear in other beach resorts, like the one
about the 1994 US invasion. The
armada appeared offshore, and then
through the water had come “this little
thing, difficult to make out”. Cap Hait-
ien’s residents lined the city’s corniche
and were transfixed.
The tiny thing came on until it was
just offshore, and then it rose up and
revealed a huge amphibious tank
underneath, bursting up onto the
beach, the Americans within ready
to fight. “The spectators applauded,”
said Jean-Bernard. “Not because they
were happy to be invaded, but out of
pure surprise.”
It was Jean-Bernard’s driver and secu-
rity guard who took us to the Citadel.
And it was his driver and security guard
who got us out of a situation at one ofEarlier this year,Ruaridh Nicollfound himself
ignoring official advice and travelling to Haiti
and Venezuela, where chaos stalks the streets but
hoteliers and guides long for tourists’ return
We viewed one of the
world’s great collections of
Picassos as motorcyclegangs roamed outside
OCTOBER 19 2019 Section:Weekend Time: 17/10/2019- 17:29 User:andrew.higton Page Name:WKD6, Part,Page,Edition:WKD, 6, 1