Qantas offers a seven-hour flight to nowhere
edition.cnn.com
edition.cnn.com
The offer did include some perks, not just a random flight over a bunch of random ocean.
Similarly, wood cabin rentals are very hot in the US now. An opportunity to do something different that breaks up the monotony without notably raising the COVID risk.
Fairly smart move from Qantas, from my POV. People are desperate for a safe(-ish) diversion. I found the "virtual safe room escapes" business model to be pretty similar.
I suppose it makes more sense in Australia where the coronavirus prevalence is fairly low at the moment, but from my point of view in the US the idea of taking the risk of getting on a plane right now seems especially crazy if I don't even get to land somewhere interesting.
CNN: The odds of catching Covid-19 on an airplane are slimmer than you think, scientists say
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/odds-catching-covid-19-fl...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/18/health/coronavirus-airline-tr...
Wow. 15. It does say March, so perhaps masks weren't in broad use? Still, though, 15 is a lot.
It’s interesting that other airlines are adapting by introducing these ‘excursion’ flights for the pent up tourist market.
I guess modern airliners make it safer but I was surprised to see them running today.
Likewise commercial aviation yields about 0.2 deaths per 10 billion passenger miles [2] compared to 1.13 deaths per 100 million miles driving in the US [3], over 500 times higher.
[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#:~:te....
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#:~:text=The%20....
[3]: https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state....
Why? The purpose of transportation is getting from point A to point B. Who cares if flights emit 5x the carbon per hour if it gets you there 20x faster?
This feels somehow inapt as a response to
>> It's entertainment not transport
>flying from London to New York and back generates about 986kg of CO2 per passenger.
This is around 5.8% of annual average co2 emission per Australian. So if you take this flight to no-where and reduce your other consumption by around 6%, you are no more guilty than any other Australian.
Likewise, since I doubt any luggage or cargo will be aboard the plane, it's probably going to fly pretty light compared to a normal international load. No idea what that means for gas mileage, but stuff to consider.
All in all, I think the idea is pretty darn cool. If everyone gets a window seat, sure, why not? It's not the usual "get from A to B in a big hurry" kinda flight.
Since you assume the jet will be fully loaded, the Ford is 63 to 126 mpg/passenger fully loaded. That’s a more even comparison.
[1]: https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-613-march-8-2010-v....
You need to compare total amount of fuel consumed per person for a fun day trip. Also, adding more people to a Ford truck doesn't dramatically increase the fuel consumption.
But people don't take these flights every day, rather once a lifetime at most.
It's a spectrum of trade offs.
Aussies in September 2020: 7h Flight to nowhere sells out in 10min breaking all records.
So while there is less overt denialism around climate change, there is a still a lot of cognitive dissonance. People make excuses about having to do more than our "fair share" or say that mining is necessary for the jobs.
We once did, but Dutch disease set in like many predicted at the start of the commodities boom. It's popular to blame wages but manufacturing powerhouses like Germany have equivalent wages and compete easily.
People subtlety associate fossil fuels with a healthy economy and govts are unwilling to try change popular perceptions as it's contentious enough to have taken down a few PM's. Meanwhile Norway is now powered by 100% renewables and still shipping huge amounts of oil elsewhere.
Australians are the 2nd biggest greenhouse emitters per capita after Qatar. It's shameful.
I say this as a person that lives within a couple of miles of a big airport. So not guessing.
https://envhealthcenters.usc.edu/2019/02/ultrafine-particle-...
Large airport flight paths can have different sounds though.
Overall, the turboprops that the airlines used didn't ever bother me at all.
But, on parents weekend and at graduation, the airport had a lot of private jets flying in, and the noise difference between the prop planes and the jets was disruptive.
I had to live with that for two years. All very annoying.
It's not a big deal, except for the big military transports; those things are loud and don't care.
At any rate, most entertainment and recreational activities are bad for the environment, but as far as most of them go, this one is relatively clean.
Even with the stabilizer I'm thinking that I need to take it out for a long drive to use up the fuel. At the rate things are going, I'm not sure I'll need the car for commuting until next summer.
Not if they go "nowhere".
How bad is airline travel?
Like what's worse, taking one such flight once a year, or using a personal car to the office every day instead of taking a bus?
Or is it worse to take one such flight once a year, or renting larger apartment which consumes more electricity due to air conditioning?
(There's a simple answer to all these questions: carbon tax and market economy.)
Nope his comment was, yours isn't.
> How bad is airline travel?
What part about a journey to nowhere confuses you? Let me break it down:
1. That's not travel 2. It's quite bad for the environment compared to doing just about any other possible leisure activity - because that's what a trip to nowhere is, not travel.
> Or is it worse to take one such flight once a year, or renting larger apartment which consumes more electricity due to air conditioning?
A truly irrelevant question to top off the delight that is your contribution to this thread. Is your ~20% larger apartment's AC fueled by burning methane?
Let me put it another way:
What's worse:
a) take a flight nowhere, and spend the rest of a vacation in a nearby town, reachable by train
b) take a flight to some remote location and spend a week there
?
> Is your ~20% larger apartment's AC fueled by burning methane?
AC is fueled by whatever electicity is produced from. Worldwide, less than half of electricity is produced from more or less safe sources.
> 20%
When choosing between a flat in a city and a house in a countryside the apartment area difference can be easily 200% for the same rent.
> A truly irrelevant question
I'm sorry I did not explained how is that relevant.
Trying to be spend money on what's "good" is a path nowhere. It will likely lead to the same CO2 emissions, because any person does not know how much CO2 this particular activity produces per dollar spent. (E. g. how much CO2 was emitted to produce this can of beer?)
CO2 emissions can be included in the price of goods (carbon tax), that way people won't have to behave "good" to be actually good for the environment.
Like if someone wants to take a flight nowhere, go ahead, take it, pay for CO2 emissions, but restrict themselves on doing something else which emits CO2.
People cannot stand the idea when other enjoying themselves, while they restrict themselves for doing that because they worry for the planet.
Their intentions are good, but their methods aren't.
They ask other people to stop doing whatever they want doing.
What should they do instead, is to ask governments to making everyone stop doing that. And the best way to do that (and I apologize for saying it 100s time in this topic) is to introduce a CO2 tax.
Edit - I see this very much along the lines of healthcare, we are better off focusing on keeping people healthy and not trying to force a lifestyle on people. I know there are those that disagree, but I think that largely comes back to my puritain comment
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2019/...
[2] https://www.icao.int/environmental-protection/Carbonoffset/P...
Then ask your government to introduce carbon tax to make easier for normal people decide how to spend their hard earned money climate-efficiently instead of shaming people.
> It could easily be tons of CO2
Sure. Maybe they should buy a new flat instead, which was build using concrete, which was produced emitting a lot of CO2. Or maybe they should buy a car instead and burn oil producing CO2 and driving roads and bridges which were built from concrete with emissions lot of CO2. Or maybe they should just spend their money buying some useless stuff without even thinking how much CO2 was emitted for production of that stuff.
Just introduce carbon tax.
(The statement "one flight produces the same amount of CO2 as ..." is not good enough analysis. Airlines (including freight) produce about 2% of all emissions, so if all people stop using planes completely, it will amount only to 2% reduction).
(Should I also avoid buying something with expedited delivery because it will be deliverd by an airplane? Should I stop flying for a vacation once a year? Should I stop inviting my parents to visit me, because they would come by plane?)
How can we be sure that flying is more immoral than other activities which produce CO2 (including driving, housing, electricity and so on)?
And again, even if in theory all people in the world will try to do only the "right" things, it will still work worse than carbon tax. Simply because people don't know and cannot know much CO2 in that particular dollar spent, but competivite market knows.
Shaming is just counter-productive virtue signalling. Carbon tax is a rational and efficient way to solve CO2 emissions riddle.
Yes, obviously.
> How can we be sure that flying is more immoral than other activities which produce CO2 (including driving, housing, electricity and so on)?
Others have answered this in this thread and elsewhere repeatedly.
> And again, even if in theory all people in the world will try to do only the "right" things, it will still work worse than carbon tax
Again, false dichotomy.
> Shaming is just counter-productive virtue signalling. Carbon tax is a rational and efficient way to solve CO2 emissions riddle
This is just a nonsense divisive ans dismissive classification. It's called asking people not to do bad things and not doing bad things. Pretty simple.
> Yes, obviously
I rest my case.
The aircraft is a Qantas B787-9 Dreamliner with 236 seat passenger capacity [1]. This trip took 134 passengers and lasted for 7 hours [2]. A Boeing B787-9 has a fuel consumption of roughly 5600 kg fuel / hour [3]. Following the Australian government, we assume the aircraft is 100% fueled by Aviation Turbine Fuel [4] aka "avtur" aka Jet A1. Jet A1 fuel has an emissions factor (kg CO_2 / kg fuel) of 3.15 [5] . Note: this emissions factor is pretty close to a naive estimate of how much CO_2 you'd get if you burned petroleum ( 1kg of petroleum at 85% C by mass gives 0.85 kg of C gives mass(C) * molar_mass(CO_2) / molar_mass(C) = 3.12 kg CO_2 ).
So, fuel burned per passenger = (7 hours * 5600 kg fuel / hr ) / 134 passengers = 293 kg fuel / passenger. CO_2 emissions per passenger = 293 kg fuel / passenger * 3.15 kg CO_2 / kg fuel = 922 kg CO_2 .
But, we're not just burning things at ground level, we're burning jet fuel in the sky, which the 1999 IPCC special report on "aviation and the global atmosphere" explains has an additional impact in terms of radiative forcing. As summarised by MacKay:
> Is flying extra-bad for climate change in some way? Yes, that’s the experts’ view, though uncertainty remains about this topic [[ 6 ]]. Flying creates other greenhouse gases in addition to CO2, such as water and ozone, and indirect greenhouse gases, such as nitrous oxides. If you want to estimate your carbon footprint in tons of CO2-equivalent, then you should take the actual CO2 emissions of your flights and bump them up two- or three-fold. [7]
So using MacKay's suggested 2x -- 3x multiplier, we get:
Global warming impact per passenger for a single 7 hour flight to nowhere: equivalent to around 1.8 -- 2.8 metric tons of non-aviation CO_2 emissions.
For reference, that's around 7 -- 11% of an average Australian per-capita annual climate footprint, or 19% -- 29% of an average EU28 per-capita annual climate footprint [8].
[1] https://www.qantas.com/au/en/qantas-experience/onboard/seat-... [2] https://www.qantas.com/au/en/promotions/great-southern-land.... [3] https://alliknowaviation.com/2019/12/14/fuel-consumption-air... [4] https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/aviation/environmental/emi... [5] https://www.verifavia.com/greenhouse-gas-verification/fq-how... [6] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224795892_Aviation_... [7] http://www.withouthotair.com/c5/page_35.shtml [8] http://climatecollege.unimelb.edu.au/ndc-indc-factsheets
Why two-three? Why not 1.1-1.2? Why not 10-20?
> that's around 7 -- 11% of an average Australian per-capita annual climate footprint
And just to be fair, most people cannot afford long-haul flight, only richer people can. So it's rich people who produce CO2 when flying, but the same rich people produce more CO2 when they do everything else.
The argument let's ban flying because rich people produce CO would become the argument as let's ban building new houses with concrete, because only rich people can afford them, and concrete emits CO2.
Total emission of CO2 from all aviation including freight including poor countries is about 2% of all CO2 emissions.
> Why two-three? Why not 1.1-1.2? Why not 10-20?
Read the IPCC special report on aviation and global atmosphere and look at the discussion about radiative forcing -- they give estimates of the impact in terms of radiative forcing from aviation CO_2 alone and also from various other non CO_2 factors caused by aviation: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224795892_Aviation_...
TL;DR effects of contrails is actually higher than from _accumulated_ CO2.
It's very interesting, I did not know that.
So if we continue flying, we will continue increasing CO2, but the effect of contrails will stay the same, and relatively effect of contrails will be lower.
So, again, the effect is very interesting, I did not know about it. But the conclusions you made are probably oversimplified and inaccurate.
Why not just invest into cruise airships?
Besides that, it's not profitable. Helium has become super expensive, and cargo airship companies barely break even while heavily subsidised. These airships are drones. A tourist airship which needs to accommodate real people and pesky safety requirements that come with them would go broke before the first lift-off.
I would however say there is a market for explaining what you see when you fly.