With all the talk of carbon emissions etc with relation to aviation, is it not time for a change in the industry. Competition keeps fares down which encourages more traffic. On high volume routes several competitors may be vying for the trade. There could be an international body set up, to monitor and enforce a policy on all air routes. For example if 10 return flights operate per day and are 70% full this could be reduced to 7 return flights per day. Also if the 10 flights per day were operated by a 100 seater aircraft this body could insist on a reduction in flights using a larger aircraft. What I am saying is all routes should require a licence. All operators would apply for a licence to operate a route. The body would check capacity (from previous records) and judge on aircraft suited to the route. A specific route may only be able to have one carrier due to low capacity. The operator will have to submit a fare structure etc ensuring value for money for the traveller. Each operator would submit facts and figures on each route to the body which would keep monitoring and reviewing
Why don't you direct your energies to stopping empty busses littering our roads, or buses with one person in? The we could cancel the next 50 buses to ensure one bus a day drives full. Save far more than pissing around with aeroplanes! Trouble with your scenario is that when your Dad dies in Australia, you won't be able to get a flight there for 3 days because they will all be full up! Try again.
Gate 22 you are 17 years out of date. The airline industry used to be regulated by governments, who owned the airlines, decided on who could fly what roures, with what capacity, at what frequency, and at what price. It was grotesquely inefficient, it ensured that airlines were a repository of wasteful practice, airline staff had a job for life, and the customer paid the price.
Deregulation, in the US (1978 onwards) and in Europe (1992 onwards) has given rise to some anomalies and some excesses, and is regretted by a lot of airline employees who have lost some of the benefits that used to go along with the job, but it has (amongst other things) improved airline efficiency out of sight. And that includes emissions efficiency brecause that is the same as fuel efficiency and no airline can afford to waste fuel.
By the way, it may have passed you by, but from 2012 onwards airlines serving Europe will be subject to an emissions trading scheme. In effect, this means that their emissions will be capped at 3% lower than where they were in 2005 - with a further cap at -5% the following year.
So, an external agency *will* regulate the industry, as you propose. But rather than civil servants deciding, soviet-style, which airlines will fly which routes and how often, it will be left to the market, and the airlines' commercial judgement, to decide how the scarce resources (emissions permits) are to be used.
I seem to recall a report that showed that the excess gasses expelled from cows bottoms contributed more greenhouse gases that airliners, maybe we should be looking at some controls over cattle as well.
Oh no that wouldn't make goods news headlines would it, never mind the fact that cars are amongst the worst polluters. I am sure everyone on here find the airline industry being the easy headline grabbing target tiresome.
If any government is serious it should look across the board at all sources of greenhouse gasses not just one.
Take a look at the EZY website, and theres a special page (called FLYgreener) that tells you what they are doing for the environment. Its an amusing read.
Things such as
- We charge for food, so as to reduce waste
- Minimising use of airbridge/motorised steps to save fuel.
- Only flying short haul, to reduce emmisions (compared to a long haul flight)
Of course, non of the points in the diagram have anything to do with making/saving money! Its all about seriously trying to save the environment!
ln the mid-nineties l was told by a very senior pilot, in Sweden, that their authority employed an average of 147 people for every single aeroplane on the register including C152`s. No doubt that isn`t the case now. The cost ?
Who is going to pay for your plan, my dear Sir ?
Our Stasi like powers that be must be blessing the " Carbon Footprint " windfall - certainly too thick to have come up with it themselves - but l doubt that they can see where to put the brakes on.
As one of Terry Wogans` Old Gits said this morning ........
" if we have to reduce the carbon footprint of cars to accommodate air travel in the future, how do l get to the airport ?"
The EU ETS (emissions trading scheme) comes into force on 31 December 2009. All airlines had to have their monitoring and emissions plans submitted at the end of last month.
This has been a VERY demanding/costly taks for most airlines and in our case, has taken about 8 months of hard and expensive work.
This legislation change has been coming for years now ... if you're that interested in aviation emissons, how come you don't know about it?
...has taken about 8 months of hard and expensive work.
And that's just the preparation. Recording and reporting the fuel uplift for each and every flight and to an accuracy of +/-2% is going to consume a lot more effort.
Of course, it will generate thousands more civil service artificial, non-wealth creating non-jobs to process the mountain of paperwork. I wonder how long it will be before motorists will be required to get their fuel indicators calibrated to within 2% and fill out a fuel uplift report for each and every time they fill up their tanks?
If a Swiss registered aircraft owned by a company based in Germany, full of French fuel, powered by American engines takes off from a British airport, which country owns the exhaust and is reponsible for reducing it?
Two parts of the aviation industry have committed legally to saving 35 pounds of carbon over four years. Yup lbs not tonnes or tons.
How could this happen?
You get the Chairmen of Boeing and your Airline to write into the contract for purchasing 787s that each of the bosses will lose 1 stone in weight between signing and the first delivery flight.
Ok the alleged intention was to see if your chairman would actually read the document that he was signing, but there is supposedly such a deal between Boeing and Virgin.
A conservative estimate of aviation’s future significance, which uses optimistic forecasts of improvements in fuel efficiency and air traffic management and relatively modest growth rates, suggests that, between 1990 and 2050, the carbon dioxide emissions from aviation could approximately quadruple. Other forecasts suggest that the carbon dioxide from aviation could grow by more than 10 times over that period.
Most climate scientists agree that carbon dioxide emissions need to be cut by at least 80% by 2050. Clearly, in order to meet that target, a significant reduction in the projected growth of aviation, or even a decrease in aviation, would be required. Indeed, a 2007 study which looked at scenarios for a 60% cut in emissions showed that, even under the Department for Transport’s “best” case projection, over half of the UK’s carbon budget in 2050 would be taken up by the aviation industry!
They've done similar projections for the growth of methane and other gases from cows.
Cows are already much worse for the environment than Aviation. However, as the huge countries like China, Pakistan and Indonesia turn from vegetarian diets to richer, western style meat based diets, and as the number of cows in the world mutiplies by twice the rate of Aviation's growth, by 2050, the cows' methane will have taken over as the chief source of the problem.
By the way, why aren't we worried about the last thing that was going to kill us - the holes in the Ozone layer? The Ozone layer holes have got worse recently, but as Professors, academics and their mates in the press are no longer getting shed loads of money to "research" it, and report it, that fact is under-reported.
