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Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

While I agree this is a pretty pointless activity, I'll point out that modern commercial jets get ~89mpg/passenger [1]. A Ford F150 gets about 21mpg.

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....

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I will note that they sold 134 tickets. I'm guessing they only sold window seats! WHICH IS REALLY COOL!

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.

Wouldn't it be better to compare fuel per passenger per hour rather than per km? It's entertainment not transport so the KMs travelled doesn't seem so relevant.

>Wouldn't it be better to compare fuel per passenger per hour rather than per km?

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?

In this case, it’s going from Point A back to Point A.

CO2 emissions per mile is infinite.

> The purpose of transportation is getting from point A to point B.

This feels somehow inapt as a response to

>> It's entertainment not transport

Contradicting reference that was posted elesewhere in the thread: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2019/...

I don't see how that's contradicting. The parent comment was talking about carbon emissions per mile traveled between various forms of transport, your article talks about total carbon emissions. It's possible that long distance travel emit tons of carbon regardless of method, and flights are the least bad.

Not a contradiction. Driving a car on a long road trip also produces more CO2 than many people do in a year in some countries. You're not considering how low the standard of living we're talking about here is. These are people who don't have electrical service at home.

I don't see how its contradicting.

>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.

The miles flown is also more than one would drive in a day trip.

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.

> The miles flown is also more than one would drive in a day trip.

But people don't take these flights every day, rather once a lifetime at most.

Why do you compare mpg/passenger for the jet and just plain mpg for the truck?

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.

Per passenger is a little more difficult with cars but this [1] seems to suggest the average car occupancy rate is 1.59, which brings the F150 up to 33mpg/passenger.

[1]: https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-613-march-8-2010-v....

and comparing mpg assumes they will cover the same distance in 7h.

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