After nearly four weeks in quarantine (why?) Heathrow has now published the results from its Fly Quiet & Green programme for 2018 Q2.
Unfortunately it seems determined to persist with the flaky arithmetic and absence of logic and common sense that characterised the results for previous quarters (which remain unaltered).
For Q2, as with previous quarters, league table scores have again been inflated, this time by an average of around 42% compared to the results that are produced when Heathrow's own published methodology and performance rankings are used. Once again that increase has not been applied uniformly across all 50 airlines (a number of them have been awarded more than double the number of points that they merit), with the result that the relative league table positions are significantly altered.
Notably, Q2 contains the single most egregious example of distortion of an airline's true environmental performance (Air France, see below) since the current flawed scoring system began at the beginning of 2017.
Among the many anomalies in the Q2 results are:
a First placed airline Scandinavian, with 810 points, is arbitrarily demoted to the Number 2 slot in the table, while 2nd placed Aer Lingus with 30 points less is bizarrely awarded the Number One position.
b Austrian and Cathay Pacific are given an unjustified hike up the table (by 15 and 13 places respectively).
c Air France, whose performance qualifies it for 9th place with 650 points, just above Air India in 10th place on 648, is inexplicably demoted by 22 places to 31st, leaving the two airlines 25 places and 154 points apart. Pour encourager les autres, presumably.
d Other airlines entitled to feel aggrieved with this quarter's published results include Qatar Airways, relegated 17 places from its rightful position, together with Turkish Airlines (short haul) and EAT (demoted by 13 and 12 positions respectively).
e "RAG" (red/amber/green) classifications are again applied inconsistently; for example Air China and Qantas, ranked 43rd equal by Heathrow for early/late movements, get an "Amber" for that category while BA Shorthaul, ranked 30th for that metric by Heathrow, gets a "Red".
f Heathrow's results, which aim to compare the "top 50" airlines (defined by number of flights in Q2) omit Korean Airlines, while Middle East Airlines (short haul), which operated fewer flights than Korean in Q2, is included.
Q2 2018