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Comment by fyfy18 | Hacker News Reader

Business travel is also something we should look to curtail. I expect there are a high number of business trips that could be replaced with virtual meetings if they needed to be (say, if there was a global pandemic restricting travel). In the US around 1/5 of domestic flights are for business purposes [0]. If you also include people who relocated for work, and are travelling to visit family, I expect it would be much higher.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/207103/forecasted-number...

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Yes, although it’s worth saying that at least in Britain business trips are a strong minority of flights. With Heathrow expansion the case was made that it was vital because capacity was stretched, and businesses in general needed the extra flights, but in fact most flights are tourism. And even within that category there’s a lot of frivolous travel, people flying for a night or two, or even commuting by plane.

With respect, travelling to relocate for work or to visit family seem like they fall into the category of necessary flights - I mean, if you said to everyone "you can only take 10 return flights in your life from now on", people would spend them on relocating and family visits with considerable ease. They would think twice about that ski trip though.

As you say, the average business trip is more about status and could easily be dropped. But it's not fair to put relocation for work into that category.

My point about relocation is a lot of people relocate for jobs that they could easily do at home or in a satellite office. I get that some people want to move so they aren't stuck in the same town of pop. 1,200 all their life (that's my situation), but I don't think most people are in that situation.

Say you were raised in Wichita, KS. I've never been there, but given its size I assume you can have a pretty good lifestyle living there. However if you want to work in tech, media, journalism, law, finance or a whole bunch of other industries, you would really be limiting your opportunities if you stayed there.

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