Enviromental Propoganda

[Dark Knight]

To counter some of the environmental propaganda and snake oil salesmen would someone provide me with up to date fuel burn figures in total litres and litres per hour for:

B-737 -800/900 SYD – MEL
A-320 SYD – MEL
B747-400 SYD – LHR
B777
A330
A34o

Assistance will be greatly appreciated.

DK

[remoak]

...and don't forget:

"As these are anonymous forums the origins of the contributions may be opposite to what may be apparent. In fact the press may use it, or the unscrupulous, to elicit certain reactions."

Sorry if you are genuine... but such a question has all the hallmarks of a journo trolling for info...

[Dark Knight]

An equally valid assumption would be that `shouting' such protestations could equally come from the snake oil salesmen or enviromental progandarists in the manner how they work.

The reason for the request follows the enviromentalis weekly letter to the editor within the local rag telling how enviromentally unfriendly aviation is and it should be banned & Taxed out of existence.

Which, if you care to check `The Greens' policies is precisely what they would have happen.

The information is needed to compose a researched rebuttal to the claims made in the letter as knowing from some 40 odd years in the industry, most of it spent up the in pointy bit of some of the best & most sophisticated flying machines of the time, the aviation industry is a leader in reducing envorimental effects and has spent billions of dollars doing so.

A polite method of checking would have been to pm me requesting verification & validity of the request which, being genuine would have been given that is, assuming you are prepared to identify yourself and your bonafides?

Dk

[freddyKrueger]

Dark Knight, something to ponder...

Heathrow's 'ghost' flights


March 12, 2007
LONDON: An airline is flying an empty passenger jet between Heathrow and Cardiff on a daily basis - just so that it can hold on to its lucrative slots at the London airport.

The flights, which have pumped hundreds of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the past five months, threaten to undermine the aviation industry's public stance of trying to reduce emissions. The flights are being run by British Mediterranean Airways (BMed) -- until recently part-owned by the family of Wafic Said, the Syrian-born financier -- which flies the Airbus passenger plane from Heathrow to Cardiff and back six times a week. No tickets are sold and all 124 passenger seats are empty. Because there are no passengers, the "ghost" flights, which have run since October, do not appear on departure or arrival boards.
The sole purpose is to keep hold of landing slots on runways at Heathrow, the world's busiest airport for international flights. The slots can be reallocated if an airline does not use them regularly. They are so valuable that they can change hands among airlines for up to £10 million ($24.7 million) each.
Over the five months, the 12 flights a week will have sent as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 36,000 cars streaming along a motorway. It is equivalent to the annual CO2 output of a town of 2000 people.
By the end of this month, the flights will also have cost BMed at least £2 million. There is a £2500 fuel bill for each flight, plus pound stg. 300,000 a month for the lease, insurance, crew and maintenance charges.
Graham Thompson, of Plane Stupid, a campaign group, said: "It's quite shocking. These ghost flights very much undermine the greenwash we get from the airlines on how they are going to protect the environment. This shows that they are willing to sacrifice the climate for a profit."
The flights reveal the lengths to which airlines will go to hang on to runway slots. A slot is the right to use a runway for a take-off or a landing at a given time of the day. The practice is known in the airline industry as "keeping slots warm".
All of Heathrow's daily 1250 slots -- except for a few late at night -- are allocated to particular airlines and are jealously guarded. BA has 40 of the slots at Heathrow. There is also an active -- and some believe illegal -- trade in the runway positions, with some carriers prepared to buy their way in.
While the trades are rarely made public, three years ago Qantas paid pound stg. 20 million for just two return flights a day.
The Sunday TimesSource:The Australian (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21363308-23349,00.html)

[Sprite]

Dark Knight;
B744 SIN-LHR
depends on wind conditions however approximately 148.0 Tonnes. This is about 185,000 L at a SG of 0.8 (which is a rough estimate). The B744 burns about 10 Tonnes per hour as a rough guess. More when its fully loaded and less when its lightly loaded.
Interestingly i do recall reading that a full jet will burn less fuel per passenger than taking the same trip in the family car. It would be interesting to know how much fuel the QM2 for example would burn on the same journey and work it out per pax.

Edit...done some calc's, works out as about 4L/100km per person, assuming 350 POB.

[Dark Knight]

Thanks Sprite; from this calculations can and comparisons can be made to refute the propognada, myths and untruths from the snake oil salesman.

Need a few more statistics.

Freddy; there always two sides to every story:

`Plane Stupid, a campaign group, said: "It's quite shocking. These ghost flights very much undermine the greenwash we get from the airlines on how they are going to protect the environment. This shows that they are willing to sacrifice the climate for a profit."

Hysterical, mythical, hogwash plucked from who knows where based upon not a skerrick of fact - looks good in print and as a sound byte however; how many journalists are clever enough, educated sufficiently or of sound common sense to ask the hard questions; "Er, on what do you base that information; where is your research; and, who in the airlines made the staements you attribute to them?

Mt St Helen tossed out more pollution, CO2, etc than all aircraft have done since Wilbur & Orville.

DK

[404 Titan]

Dark Knight

I love it when this little gem of a debate sticks its head up because quite frankly it's rubbish. Aviation is the easiest of targets to pick on because it's so visible but the reality is it isn’t the polluter some would lead you to believe. To prove my point these are the official world wide air pollution figures for 2002.

Total Air pollution Emissions in 2002.

• Energy Industries = 53.8%
• Transport = 21.3%
• Manufacturing Industries & Construction = 11.7%
• Fugitive Fuel Emissions = 8.1%
• Other Sectors = 5.0%

Now let’s break down the transport sector to find who is the most polluting there.

Transport Emissions in 2002.

• Passenger Cars = 54.9%
• Other road Transport = 33.4%
• Aviation = 7.4%
• Railways = 2.3%
• Navigation = 2.0%

If we extrapolate this further for Aviation,

7.4% x 21.3 = 1.576%
In other words aviation accounted for no more than 1.6% of total air pollution in 2002. If we are to do anything about worldwide air pollution I think we should look at the energy industry first as it is by far the worst offender. Aviation is a piss in the ocean by comparison.

Fuel burn A330/340 = 6.0 Tonnes per hour (average).
= 7500 litres at an SG of 0.8 kg per litre.

[turbolager]

Sick of all the junk science? Good doco here:
The Great Global Warming Swindle

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9005566792811497638&q=%22The+Great+Global+Warming+Swindle%22

[Akubra]

Thanks for that turbolager! Good find!

[Led Zep]

Dark Knight, I recall that when the Australian Antarctic Whatever took delivery of their new Airbus the figures quoted at the time included that the Airbus would burn the same amount of fuel (litres) in 19 flights as the ship it is replacing does in 1!

Others may be able to confirm!!

[aircraft]

I read somewhere in the press recently that the latest airliners (e.g. 787, Airbus 380) are actually more fuel efficient per passenger than the best hybrid cars.

[Duff Man]

It was a night for partying. Fireworks fizzed across the sky as half a million people celebrated Brisbane's annual Riverfestival last September. Then came a deafening roar. An Australian air force F1-11 swooped over the revellers, leaving behind a stream of flame hot enough to be felt below. Within a second it was gone, and cheers went up as the DJ announced the completion of the highlight of the evening, a "dump and burn".

The aircraft had jettisoned most of its fuel into the sky and ignited it. Later, the festival organisers announced that 300 trees had been planted outside the city to soak up the estimated 68 tonnes of greenhouse gases released by the stunt: dump, burn and offset.New Scientist 10 Mar 2007 (http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19325941.800)
The full article comes to only one certain conclusion: for each 1 tonne of aircraft fuel burned 3.15 tonnes of CO2 are produced. There are huge discrepancies concerning the allocation of CO2 emmissions to passengers in the form of carbon offsetting calculators (the writer looks at three - The CarbonNeutral Company; Climate Care; and Atmosfair). There is also some serious doubt as to the viability of offsetting carbon emissions by planting trees ... at the most, all this would do is delay release of CO2 for about 100 years - and the trees themselves take many years to "kick in", should they survive at all.
If February, Amsterdam-based lobby group Transnational Institute went as far as to claim that offsets companies engaged in "Enron-style accounting". We're entering a dangerous new era of snake oil salesmen and need our governments to take charge immediately.

[Biggles_in_Oz]

"In February, Amsterdam-based lobby group Transnational Institute went as far as to claim that offsets companies engaged in "Enron-style accounting". We're entering a dangerous new era of snake oil salesmen and need our governments to take charge immediately.

http://www.klydemorris.com/strips.cfm?strip_ID=1712