The aviation industry is “failing dramatically” in its efforts to tackle its role in the climate crisis, according to a newly formed group of aviation professionals.
They say they are torn between their passion for flying and their concern for the planet and are calling for a fundamental transition of the industry, including controlling flight numbers.
Stop those ghastly proles being able to go on holiday, that’s what we say! Only truly vital flights for Party Members, Comrade!
It’s actually a self-solving problem. As flight numbers rise the planet gets warmer. Hence no need to fly to get to a warm place, no point in flying to winter sports cos all the snow will melt, so fewer flights. There’s an equilibrium point in there somewhere. Or there would be if it wasn’t all a scam.
“Flying causes more CO2 emissions than any other form of transport per mile and is dominated by rich passengers, with 1% of the world’s population responsible for 50% of aviation emissions”.
Surely they should be arguing that the rich must stop flying to save the planet…………
Tenuously on topic and following on from a thread the other day, I wonder if that champion of net zero, Spud, took a charabanc or choo choo to Chichester or did he, gasp, ‘drive’?
Thinking of starting a net zero coffee shop – we serve coffee only when gridwatch shows Sum(Wind+Sum) > Gas. At other times we won’t be boiling any drinks.
The beauty of neoliberalism is that someone out there is welcome to try this.
They could start by banning private jet flights to those COP jamborees.
I think that politicians should lead by example on this, starting with the PM they should all travel everywhere by public transport. Naturally it will be a condition of employment for all government employees too…
So by the looks of it, a whole 5 people, many of whom seem to be “former” people.
Looking at the group behind this, “aviation professionals” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Not one was ever a pilot. One claimed to have been a “plane spotter” because he lived near Schiphol as a child, ffs. The other four were either in tourism related jobs, or were ‘sustainability executives’ for an airline.
When I worked for A Big Company we were entitled only to Second class rail travel unless accompanying someone senior enough to travel First.
Consequently rogues dragged their Section Heads to meetings all over the country: “I need you there, Geoff, it’ll add so much weight to my conclusions; we’ll get the decision we want.”
Zil Planes.
“So by the looks of it, a whole 5 people, many of whom seem to be “former” people.”
Yes… Dutch Eco-Warrior Slow Marchers who got caught out , got booted, and either founded their own Eco-Advisory Thing, or found a place in already existing Eco-Advisory Things.
The Grift is Real.
Doubly so because they’re waffling about passenger flights, which are only about 1/5th to 1/3th of all aviation.
Dunno how it is for other airports, but at Schiphol roughly 75% of flights are freight.
It’s similar to the middle-class anti-car brigade here, who seem not to realise that their position is also anti-Amazon delivery, anti-Ocado, anti-ambulance and fire engine, anti-plumber and builder. And anti-everyone outside a metropolis.
Which is perhaps why Nigel received such a strong vote.
Airbus must make 20% of planes electric. 28% in 2030.
7:15 a.m. in New York and while I wasn’t intending to this morning, inspired by the hypocrisy of this article I guess I’m going to have to fire up the old X1 carbon and peruse 1800WXBrief.com to see what the conditions are like at it Linden New Jersey and if I can take a quick hop around the patch. Burn some of that 100 LL (they call it low lead, but they mean low lead compared to other pre-1935 aviation fuel, it’s higher than the lead was in any automotive gasoline ever)
With avgas at $6.75 a gallon flying over to the cafe in Lock Haven Pennsylvania is going to result in lunch being a $100 hamburger.
If the weather cooperates I’ll do all that, and enjoy it all, and not give a second thought to climate change.
“anti-plumber and builder”: didn’t MayorArsehole suggest that tradesmen should travel on the tube?
An Airbus A320neo flying from East Midlands to Malaga will use around 18t of jet fuel round-trip. In an all-economy configuration it holds 180 passengers, so 100kg of fuel per person to go on holiday, or 50kg per person per leg.
The Dear Leader’s favourite private jet is the RAF’s A321, G-GBNI. It would take more than 50kg of fuel to start up its engines and taxi to the runway.
Interestingly Owen Jones thought that the Greens could counteract the Reform surge.
My relative who is a friend of Murphy balks when I suggest he limit his own travel, as do 99.99999999% of all these eco-warriors.
Frankly they need to be detained at Farage’s pleasure as and when Reform take office, as Charles will need to be removed in line with his links to the likes of Klaus Schwab and George Soros.
“Interestingly Owen Jones thought that the Greens could counteract the Reform surge.”
And we thought Milliband was mad.
The only hope aviation has of becoming ‘carbon neutral’ is to use synth fuels.
No chance of electric planes for anything other than showpiece expensive taxis around a city like a helicopter.
The tyranny of the rocket equation sees to that.
See when you burn fuel, you no longer have to carry it, so then you don’t need as much for the next bit.
An A350 can carry 140,000L of fuel, which give or take is 110,000kg, or 110 tons.
The plane itself weighs 115tons. (Payload of about 45 tons)
So if you do a long route and use all the fuel, you’re burning about the same weight of the plane in fuel.
This only works because you aren’t carrying the fuel any more after burning.
Batteries on the other hand…
They weigh exactly the same if they’re full or empty. The same plane would be stopping a lot more to spend hours on the ground recharging (though I imagine with planes, it’d be easier to have some sort of battery swap system with it being a more tightly controlled environment than cars). some of the longer routes wouldn’t even be flyable
Nothing really new about this. Did not the Duke of Wellington complain that trains just allowed the common people to move about unnecessarily?
Turkey-spam returns!
PS Southerner, you owe me a new keyboard 🙂 I’m definitely stealing ZiL planes
Oh, it’s gone already 🙂
>I’ll do all that, and enjoy it all, and not give a second thought to climate change.
Will you give a thought to other people’s children?
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/10/20/2023-23247/finding-that-lead-emissions-from-aircraft-engines-that-operate-on-leaded-fuel-cause-or-contribute-to
Hell, I’m better qualified to comment than these nutters due to my nephew being a commercial airline pilot.
….and being an engineer who understands that the universe ignores feelz.
Pollies.
‘While the MoD has yet to approve a full business case for the programme or reveal its likely eventual cost, Start notes: “Wedgetail is actually going to cost less than the original programme expectation.
“We were originally buying five [aircraft], and we reduced that to three in an earlier SDR [Strategic Defence Review] round, and because it is a fixed-price programme, the expectation is that Boeing will still deliver to the price,” he says.’
So we’ll now have 2/5 of the aircraft we ordered, therefore providing 3/5 of the planned capacity, for a similar programme price, with each aircraft costing 60% more, but “Wedgetail is actually going to cost less than the original programme expectation.”
https://archive.ph/ktqA9
Why did we need five to begin with, and now only three will do? Perhaps some MoD Tarquin wanted to name them Eeny, Meeny, Miny and Mohammed.
@Chernyy Drakon
It’s even worse than you say as with current technology planes, unlike rockets we send to Mars, do not need to carry oxidiser, so they are even lighter than ones with self-contained batteries. Of course, in principle someone might invent a battery that uses air in its reaction, but that would also need to emit the reaction products to avoid it getting heavier as it discharged.
On train home from city this evening. Bump into an ex colleague who is now a global head of sustainability for some large concern. Does it involve flying a lot? Yep. A week away every couple of months.
The irony was not lost on me nor them.
AA
The irony was not lost on me nor them.
who he, her, xhe, zhe? did it remind you if its pronouns?
CD: it’s even worse. Airliners can’t land with a full fuel load as it’ll break the undercarriage, so an electric one has to be even heavier to be strong enough to land, reducing range/payload even further.
…and so the electric plane developers are slowly going bust, like Lilium, because what they’re developing makes no sense to anyone. Flying taxis, FFS? Zil planes. These fuckers are just subsidy farmers, including Airbus with its silly hydrogen bollocks.
I read a review of an electric Cessna equivalent. It takes 60% of its battery to take off and get up to circuit height. All it can do is circuit-bash. OK for absolute ab initio; useless for anything else.
Lilium: predicted it three years back: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4496833-lilium-perhaps-one-that-wont-fly