Interesting Thread
I currently fly 737 lowco/charter airline in Europe, and we are always suggested to do tankering if there a slight fuel price difference at destination.
However I'm not a big fan of this practice, because we always land close to MLAW. Neither very efficient nor eco friendly if you end up doing holding patern at destination to burn the extra fuel.
Another issue is with wings full of fuel at temperature well below zero, you'll be surprise to see ice building on the wings. Common practice is to left fuel on the center tank and refuel the main tanks with warm fuel at destination, it usually take care of the icing pb.

If they want to talk about tankering on a BIG scale, they should take a close look at the amounts the airlines in the Middle East are hauling around.
The ME fuel prices are way below all other places. Emirates, Qatar Airways, Etihad, Oman Air, Gulf Air and Saudi Arabian Airlines.
How much extra fuel did Emirates carry on the A380 when they did 3 goarounds in Manchester and then diverted to LHR?

After the TWA800 incident, operators of 747s were mandated to keep a predetermined amount of fuel in the centre wing tank to avoid any build up of fuel vapour.

There is a big difference between tankering and diversion/holding fuel.

There is only one airline in your list above that regularly tankers round trip fuel from the ME to Europe. I'll let you guess which one, it's not Emirates by the way.

Fuel for 3 goarounds and a diversion to LHR is way above normal holding/diversion fuel. Emirates tankers same as the others even if it may not be possible to tanker round trip.
Sitting on ground in Hyderabad waiting for the ice to melt from the wings on a 380? Landed with tankering fuel.
BIG numbers involved with these airlines.

Because the Public Interest Disclosure Act says so. Why don't you read it?

Is this matter 'public interest'? - the making of a BBC documentary seems to vindicate this.

If it's not whistleblowing, he will be hunted down like a dog.

Somebody needs to explain to me what significant difference flying economy as opposed to Business makes to the environment?

Well I have read it and my opnion, and I am not a lawyer, is that this would not be considered a proteected dissclosured under the act because it does not meet the requirments for that, specifically
43B-f) 'that information tending to show any matter falling within any one of the preceding paragraphs has been, is being or is likely to be deliberately concealed'.

I think tankering was a well known practice which was not in any way concealed, therefore it does not meet the requirments ot be a protected disclosure under the act, essentially because it is not actually a disclosure.

The focus on it is also entirely disproportionate. All measures are necessarily trade offs between cost, efficiency, investment, performance etc. Some level of tankering is necessary and at the current level the effect is tiny so although things could doubtless be better it is crazy to focus on this and not other areas where much larger savings can be found. If we look at any area of modern life whatsoever we will find practices with similar or larger impacts which are not highlighted by an eratz 'whistleblower' as some shocking outrage. We should reject the fake outrage and seek to focus on changes that are a good trade off between benefit and cost/inconvenience.

I think that was the point.

Or don't you think that demand for air transport is price-sensitive ?

In an idle moment, I wasted some of my remaining life looking up numbers on t'interweb.

It turns out that an A320 type of aircraft, operating, say, LHR-MUC and return, would burn about 5 Tonnes each way. So if the return fuel burn is added to the outbound aircraft weight (guessed at 77T), it would be adding about 6.5% (these are ROUGH FIGURES!).

The CO2 produced on the outbound leg would be, according to the ICAO website, 10,554 Kg. Assuming a direct relationship with aircraft weight, the tankered fuel generates 6.5% of that, ie 686 Kg CO2.

According to "They Work for You" a road bridger vehicle weighing, say, 40-50 tonnes, would generate 950 grams per kilometer, ie 95 Kg per 100 Km carrying fuel to MUC. So if the return fuel were uplifted at MUC, those 5 tonnes would have generated 10% of that, just 9.5 Kg, per 100 Km road distance from the refinery to Munich.

Not to be taken as too accurate or even serious, but it would seem that within a wide margin of error, in environmental terms it's best not to tanker as opposed to uplifting at the destination, ceteris paribus, which of course they probably are not.

Mind you, my calculations could easily be outside even that wide margin of error. I haven't done sums like that for years.

THANK YOU!!!

Think about it like this - the airline only operates that route because it knows it can make a profit from it. As a business class pax you're contributing a lot more of the profit incentive than the average economy pax and therefore have to assume more of the environmental impact.
In a more simple sense, you're taking up more of the available resource on the flight (cabin space & weight)

There is no denying that there can be operational benefits from tankering fuel.

But you, and the poster that you quote, appear to be the only two contributors arguing that it's actually greener to transport jet fuel to a given airport by air rather than by surface (land or sea) in bulk.

I'd be fascinated to see your sums demonstrating that.

Part 135 requirement for 45 minutes reserve fuel - makes the aircraft heavier for safety reasons.

There is another benefit to tankering not mentioned here.
Airport A raises its fuel prices above the normal.
Airlines flying to airport A start tankering fuel from other airports - Airport A has a glut of fuel and almost no sales
Airport A lowers its fuel prices to slightly lower than normal
Airlines flying to airport A refuel at airport A and tanker to their now more expensive airports.

This is straightforward competition at work to keep aviation fuel costs low. And as stated above there are other advantages for tankering in some situations/operational concepts

Running Ridges
But isn't there a counter argument, albeit a minor one, that the fact that there are considerably less seats in C Class amounts to less weight?

So minority is always wrong just because fewer people oppose an idea?

I'll do it RIGHT after you publish your thoroughly researched and peer-proofed calculations proving that tankage is detrimental to the environment and scientifically disprove the above notion that taking fuel to a remote destination is more harmful than tankage.

Just an observation, and not my aisle so to speak, but 5 tonnes burn sounds very excessive for a modern short haul type on that sort of sector...any A320 experts care to comment?