Lufthansa’s European Union Strasbourg “shuttle” | Hacker News Reader

Lufthansa’s European Union Strasbourg “shuttle”

onemileatatime.com

92 pointselmalto94 comments

The actual waste here is that while the European Parliament normally meets in Brussels, it is still bound by a 1992 decision to have a monthly session in Strasbourg [1]. This creates a huge and unnecessary overhead (shuttling 705 MEPs back and forth, maintaining separate offices in Strasbourg and other unnecessary duplication of efforts), of which this additional flight is just a small part. This could be fixed by deciding that the European Parliament meets in Brussels year-round.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_of_the_European_Parliamen...

Or just keep adding more capitals into the rotation, until the overhead of any capital is negligible. I'm actually rather happy to have a moving capital / parliament seat. Would probably do with the fancy buildings and architecture, though.

> keep adding more capitals into the rotation, until the overhead of any capital is negligible

In what world is maintaining multiple headquarters cheaper than one?

The more capitals you have, the less you need to proportionately increase your budget to add another one.

This guy bureaucrats.

They do that for the European Council, but it's probably not feasible to do so for all seven EU "houses of Parliament".

The French will never agree to that, sadly. It's a prestige thing for them

So while this flight sounds a bit ridiculous it's not really. It takes of in Frankfurt and which is a big hub. You can buy a ticket VIE->FRA->SXB for 1000 EUR in Business class. It takes you three hours to get there. The cheapest ticket not involving a train in business class is 850 EUR so barely cheaper and takes 5.5 hours.

As to why the plane does not take passengers on the return flight: it's a 30 minute flight and it's probably more efficient for the airline to send the plane in that configuration back to Frankfurt as there is no demand for a business class only flight on that day out of Strasbourg. A plane that does not fly is losing money.

> You can buy a ticket VIE->FRA->SXB for 1000 EUR in Business class.

There's your problem. Put them in economy. That adds 50% more seats to the flight AND saves money.

Or rather, reimburse them for economy and let them decide whether they want to pay more.

I don't get the point of this flight. A train between the two will be around two hours, so an hour slower than the plane, but when you add travel to airports, it's probably faster, and the trains are more comfortable (and you can work from them).

Frankfurt is a major Lufthansa hub.

There is a train station at Frankfurt Airport, but a plane connection would be airside, and for connections having to travel to city center possibly with bags is a minus.

These days there is onboard wifi on most planes.

What about the 10x worse carbon footprint per passenger mile? At 2 flights per month it's a drop in the bucket so who cares. But replacing the trains with flights would be extremely wasteful.

Ultimately, it seems like the price of carbon is not high enough to offset an entire cabin of business class seats of €1K+ each.

If you want the behavior to stop, increase the price of carbon. It’s all about the money in the end.

The consumer in this case is the European Parliament. It's hard to think of anyone who would be less price-sensitive.

I’ve seen many references to “business class” here as if it were something special and thus worthy of additional scrutiny. On Lufthansa short haul flights, business is economy with the middle seats blocked.

I mean, what it is doesn’t really matter if people are willing to pay €1k each, however silly it may be.

The ICE train going south towards Basel stops at the Frankfurt airport. The minus is that there is probably no train connecting directly to Strasbourg, but it's also not far away - take the stop at Offenburg and a train or shuttle bus to Strasbourg would do it.

A two-seat connection that requires leaving the airport is hardly ideal for someone connecting through Frankfurt. People want to minimize the amount of legs on their journeys.

The hub part seems to be what's easily missed here. People aren't flying in from Frankfurt. They're flying in from all over the continent, and at the nearest major hub they're all packaged into one connecting flight to Strasbourg.

Frankfurt is probably the closest international hub airport for people flying in from other countries.

It looks like there is a rail option between Brussels and Strasbourg which is just under 4 hours[1]. That's four hours where you can work the entire time. With the boarding, flight time and travel time to and from the airport what is the actual time savings here 1 hour? And if you could work the whole time on a train it sounds like a non-issue since this schedule seems to factor in two of the 4 days as travel days. Also why Frankfurt? I realize Frankfurt is an airhub but why would this be a convenient location?

[1] https://www.rome2rio.com/map/Brussels/Strasbourg#r/Train/s/0

Because frequent flier points get you nicer things than frequent rail points

For a short flight like that you'll get almost no points and you'd get more by booking a hotel room with a credit card.

Lufthansa will do everything to be profitable, except selling cheaper tickets and taking more passengers. Strategically they are the opposite of Ryanair.

Some American Carriers have a lot shorter routes flying a lot more often [1].

Frankfurt <-> Strasbourg (220km) San Francisco <-> San Salito [2] (90km)

The point of these are connections. If you are already at the airport, checked-in, luggage registered, you can just as well take the flight closer to your destination. Not saying the makes ecological sense, but I don't understand the outrage towards Lufthansa. Blame the MEP paying for these flights with your tax money and being bad role models contradicting the policies they are voting for.

[1] https://thepointsguy.com/news/longest-shortest-united-flight... [2] https://www.businesstraveller.com/business-travel/2017/09/29...

This flight seems very slow. I’ve just compared it to some short haul flights locally - 1hr 10 mins gets me 650km.

The flight in the article takes 55 minutes to go 178km. Short flights will have proportionally more time taxing etc, but this alone wouldn’t appear to explain it.

Did you compare to a local flight within the EU?

Rules about on-timed-ness and passenger compensation for delays mean that airlines now add buffers to their flight times, so most of the times it's "Wahey, we're early!", when they do experience delays they end up landing at the advertised landing time, saving them from those compensation payments.

> Did you compare to a local flight within the EU?

No. Thanks for the explanation.

Then again, it's not just a EU thing: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/airlines-are-padding-flight...

I’m in New Zealander. Short flights (internal) are something you just rock up and get on to, and there is little messing about. They don’t even require ID.

This will be the block time; gate-to-gate. It's exactly the same time that United blocks for e.g. the LAX-SAN flight, which is actually ever so slightly shorter.

Aircraft are limited to a speed of 250kts below 10,000ft unless they're in an airport's control zone and then they're limited to 200kts. So, given the time to navigate Frankfurt's complex airspace, as well as balancing how much gas needs to be burned to get high to go fast, when you will shortly need to come off the throttle and descend anyways, versus just staying low and within the speed limits, I can see 55 minutes being well within the realm of reason.

This makes sense to me.

The shortest commercial flight I ever took was from HOU to IAH†, a flight distance of 24mi/39km. I was surprised how long it took. At first I thought it was because of traffic, but a member of the flight crew told me, "We go low and slow."

†This was back when Continental was all mad about the parking situation at IAH, and so if you had an outbound flight from IAH, it would let you park for free at HOU and then add on a free HOU→IAH segment. At the time, you used to get 500 frequent flyer miles just for getting into the air, so it was an option I exercised as often as I could.

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/SCM25/history/20220504/2...

15 minutes in the air and doesn't go over 3500ft

What were they flying back on that route back then?

I have no idea. I'm not an aviation enthusiast.

I can tell you that the seats were all on one side of the plane. It was a proper Continental craft. Not a puddle jumper like I've been on going to remote places in the northwest.

The EU should adopt this idea from Sweden from the 90's^W 80's, an office in a train carriage: https://youtu.be/3HbrI3refig (first 4.5 minutes)

All reasonable until we slide over the custom plane config with extra business class...

I hope thats not a literal, we moved the seats for the aristocrats type of flight.

In most European airlines short haul business class is just economy seats with the middle blocked off and slightly better food.

This means they can dynamically adjust the size of business class on a per flight basis. So "a huge business class cabin" is misleading here.

You're directly saying that business class seats on these flights take 150% more space than economy class. I think you're trying to argue that it's not actually as comfortable as business class, but the objectionable thing about business class is not that people are more comfortable, it's the wasted space. And the wasted space seems equivalent.

I'm not looking for asceticism here, my hope is to minimize pollution. Of course, a bus would probably allow 200%-300% the space for less pollution and similar travel time.

I don’t understand how airforce one got thrown out as another example of waste

It seems EU politicians believe in climate change, until they have to catch a bus for a couple of hours…

BTW, I am a EU citizen worried about climate change and tired of recycling at home to sometimes see this kind of hypocrisy of some politicians.

> seeing this kind of hypocrisy of some politicians

No need for hypocrisy. Those of us who see flight shame as a bit silly can fly. Others can not. I assume the same applies for EU politicians.

It is hypocrisy because these trips are official ones, so they are essentially paid by us (the citizens). And these are the bureaucrats telling us to use clean vehicles.

It is not hypocrisy in the sense you state, certainly. It is the governmental one (do as I force you, not as I do with your money).

There used to be some good intercity trains from Brussels via Luxemburg to Strasbourg (Iris and Vauban), but they were cancelled in 2016 because of the TGV Est Paris-Strasbourg. It's a bit long for a bus ride really, especially when you'd want to work during the ride.

Edit: oops, this is about Frankfurt-Strasbourg. (Sorry, I mixed it up with some other fairly recent reporting.) That's really hard to justify: there are high-speed trains doing that route in 1h50, and a non-stop one could do it even faster.

Air transport account for less than 4% of the 51 b tons of CO2 we send every year. These politicians aren’t going to make any difference. We could ask them to be role models, but with what finality? Again air transport is not the most urgent problem. I understand this is a topic that can be used to raise awareness, but the most useful thing these politicians could do is to rethink the way (EU) businesses are leading China and India to use coal for energy. Why no one proposes to handle this topic, I do not understand. And if someone would handle it, then it would be time to use your next vote wisely.

Some countries are starting to ban short haul flights. Seems a bit hypocritical to ban flights that would benefit your average citizens but then utilize the type of flight that’s convenient for politicians.

> We could ask them to be role models, but with what finality?

Yes! That would show everyone that dealing with climate change is going to reduce your quality of life. I'm sure that's a good idea.

They are "not going to make a difference" but we the people (I am a Spaniard) are paying for their jobs and they are constantly pressing us to use less polluting means of transportation. That is the shame.

And the silly fact of the EU having:

Brussels, Frankfurt, Luxembourg, Strasbourg

as seats of the Government makes this shameful and, yes, scandalous.

Multiple locations makes sense politically. Different countries reduce the likelihood of anyone claiming favouritism (perhaps very slightly, but still) and makes it feel more democratic, even if it is more inefficient.

Air transport account for less than 4% of the 51 b tons of CO2 we send every year. These politicians aren’t going to make any difference.

As they say, no snowflake thinks it's responsible for the avalanche.

You realize that the individual EU countries that those same politicians represent are promoting rail travel over air travel for short haul flights for their own citizens.[1] France themselves actually passed legislation regarding this.[2]. And I know the Netherlands has made a similar attempt at legislation.

I believe consistent messaging from leaders regarding climate action does actually make a difference to the people they are asking to think and acting responsibly regarding their impact on on our fragile climate.

The EU just last year promoted "2021 the European Year of Rail."[3][4] And Adina Vălean, the European Commissioner for Transport has been very vocal about this promotion of long-distance and cross-border passenger rail travel across the continent.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-europe-travel-night-...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/apr/12/france-ban-...

[3] https://www.reuters.com/article/sponsored/connecting-europe-...

[4] https://transport.ec.europa.eu/news/end-european-year-rail-b...

That is exactly my point.

Then don’t try to convince me to separate my waste at home, because when you ask what is the true impact of it they say it is small but the sum of small efforts is what matters. Or is it that some are exempt of it?

As I understand recycling at home is just a red-herring (it ends up somewhere in Turkey anyway and even if it didn't it is just a bucket in the ocean compared to the actual reasons for the climate change (natural resources industry). If we won't discount the consequences on the climate then nuclear energy becomes even more price competitive (real non snake-oil solution)).

Indeed. The political class increasingly have lost touch with just how regular people live. A regular person would be on the 4 hour train or the Flix bus. They seem to believe in lots of things mostly for "other" people though.

It would be nice if they replaced these monthly sessions with Zoom meetings or similar. It's almost as if they are completely oblivious to corporate remote meetings revolution of the last 2+ years because of the pandemic.

I have a mental image of one of these bureaucrats sitting in business class working a Powerpoint presentation about energy policy.

It's not even a couple of hours, that's the best part. There are direct trains (ICE/TGV) that take around two hours, some even a bit less. The flight can't possibly be faster if you factor in getting to the airport and going through the security theater. Which, if we want to talk about beliefs is another ridiculous policy that hasn't demonstrably saved any lives. Instead now people simply get shot up in theaters and run over at Christmas markets. But thank god they're taking everyone's lighter and water bottle.

I wonder if part of the reason they're flying is that they don't want to be in public transport with the plebeians.

If there are direct trains there is simply no excuse.

Frankly, wherever there are fast alternatives, I wonder if the days of airlines are numbered.

Push through rail opportunities like maybe more runs with smaller trains, better synchronization of schedules, quick connections, faster trains etc..

Sure, but just to add a bit to it there were multiple terror attacks on trains in Europe in recent years. In Germany there was this knife attack just a few months ago, as an example. You also run into some annoying folks on public transport from time to time even if they're not trying to kill you. In those pricey plane seats they're among themselves.

This is the best explanation I can come up with why they're doing it, there isn't really any advantage flying this route. It's not true that people choose the most ecological mode of transport as long as speed is equal or faster, they often have other priorities.

The advantage is you can fly from wherever your constituency is in the EU to Frankfurt and then connect on to Strasbourg, and do the same on the way home.

>In those pricey plane seats they're among themselves.

Train travel also has multiple classes of service. And in some ways it's easier to keep people in their own half on a long train than on an A319 where they're only separated by a few feet and a curtain.

So I guess I don't see your point here? Unless you're claiming that terrorists travel first class on trains but can't afford it on planes.

I would imagine this is a connection flight, in which case the passenger is already airside and doesn’t need to go through security or to travel to the airport.

> In many cases these are high ranking government officials, and presumably if this flight didn’t exist, they might travel on private jets, which would be even worse; in order words, these people probably wouldn’t otherwise take a bus

Do MEPs really qualify as high ranking government officials?

Yes?

Members of the parliament (legislative power) are not the government, which is the European Commission in this case (executive power).

And by a comment on the page, the flight also takes not only MEPs but members of the EC as well

One assumes that since it has an LH flight number, anyone who wants to pay for it could book the flight.

Possibly, but not necessarily (based only on the flight number).

Fun fact, all flights (from commercial airlines) have a flight number, but those are not always sold. They might be charters or ferry/repositioning flights. (And while it might make sense to sell a repositioning flight - sometimes it's done on short notice or the airline doesn't want to assign cabin crew to those flights)

Quite aside from the flight number, the article shows you can book it, and indicates prices and seat availability for one of the dates it runs.

The kind that typically travel by private jet? I really don't think so.

Don't blame Lufthansa, blame the EU institutions and the French government for creating this bizarre nomadism of EU parliamentarians.

It makes my blood boil to think these frequent flyer politicians are the same people demanding action against climate change.

My blood boils on receiving the bamboo or papper drink straw, which immediately soaks and becomes useless. Wonder if they use them on these flights that would surely help limiting the carbon footprint.

How often do you use straws? Maybe it's a cultural thing, but as far as I'm concerned, straws are for ages 1-10 and 75+.

It's climate change passive aggressiveness. You are provided with a tool which turns useless the moment you start using it. Oh, and nearby there is magazine with ranking of the most expensive yachts in the world, and of airlines by most comfortable first class.

Our local cinema removed plastic straws before any ban came in, it was a market led thing thanks to public concern, politicians eventually followed what the market and public already demanded. Difficult to blame them.

I have a bag of 1000 plastic straws, at current consumption that will last me about 200 years.

> it was a market led thing

It was a virtue signalling thing.

Perhaps you could just drink out of a cup and be less sensitive to minor inconveniences?

There are plenty of European politicians not demanding action against climate change, how are you so sure the ones on this plane are the ones demanding action against climate change?

Action against climate change is urgently needed, so please don’t get angry at anybody trying to bring it about.

But there is a definite problem with a demand for personal action, it is both ineffective and usually hypocritical like in the way you suggested.

We absolutely need to demand that all companies and institutions get to carbon neutral or negative status in the products or services they offer.

Every individual can do their part if they want but that’s mostly to feel good, any real progress can only come from the goods/service providers fixing their offers (and that might need all sorts of legislation and incentives to get going, whatever it takes).

I agree with this, but that's what makes this hypocrisy so particularly galling. These politicians are in the unique position to write legislation (or at least influence legislation) that could prevent shit like this, like requiring a longer minimum flight distance, or prohibiting schedules like this where one leg is empty.

Totally agree, appealing to personal action (beyond voting really) is largely a "feel good exercise", but that's not the case for politicians in their official capacity.

I just really don't get this. It's "gotcha" thinking and "if they don't live perfect austerie lifestyles they cannot change climate policies".

Leave out that High Ranking government officials travel with security, press, aides, etc. Yes it's wasteful, but it's likely the safest, fastest and easiest method to gather decision makers. It's such the long tail of carbon output on the climate emergency.

Additionally, these ministers _should_ be representative (Yes, I am aware that is abstracted in the EU). It doesn't matter who they are personally, they are representing their constituents.

Do I wish that each official would show up by bicycle, sailboat, carbon neutral balloon, train, etc? Indeed I do - and the more whimsical the better. Because it would be theater, but theater is an important part of governance. Having the ministers sacrifice sends a message.

But much more important is what they vote for, what they advocate, what policies they affect - as that is what will move the needle on a better or worse world.

But the real reason I might wish they take the bus is that it just provides this fodder for doing nothing. For other blowhards to point and use this as just another excuse to twiddle our thumbs until the extreme crisis arrives.

Until Al Gore personally delivers organically grown sustainable vegetables to every human on the planet, let's not change industrial policies, taxation, energy plans or researching funding. Let's concentrate on the theater and hypocrisy first, and leave the attainable, sustainable long term profitable policy changes for our grandchildren (fingers crossed there is still a democratic institution around as the world's greatest migration and refugee crisis encircles the planet).

Btw - Google tells me blood boils around the same as water - 100 C. I don't quite see those temperatures occurring, but it will sure feel like it on, say the Indian Subcontinent. Good thing no one lives there!

> Leave out that High Ranking government officials travel with security, press, aides, etc. Yes it's wasteful, but it's likely the safest, fastest and easiest method to gather decision makers

I don't understand this. I'm accustomed that the conditions, environment, the supervisors make it more difficult for me to perform my work tasks. Why this worry to enable the officials to do they job?

The only reason the parliament even meets in Strasbourg is because France was upset. Because Brussels was chosen as the seat of the EU instead of Paris.

> safest, fastest and easiest method

Many thousands of companies had to move their communications online due to the pandemic, which is the safest, fastest and easiest method to communicate.

How exactly is an expectation of consistent messaging regarding policy "gotcha" thinking? I also don't see anywhere where it's being suggested that politicians need to live "perfect austere lifestyles." This is a false dichotomy. There is no reason they couldn't book business class on the train.

I doubt it's the same ones, but it would be good for a journalist to take the flight and see if there are any hypocritical Green politicians, etc.

(Or check expense claims if they have that detail public.)

I didn't really understand the significance of this?

Does it only make sense if you believe what the top commenter believes:

“So when I see stories like this, it confirms that all this climate change nonsense is just that - nonsense. If it was really an issue, these flights wouldn't exist."

This is the modern equivalent of a Royal Road.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Road

I guess it's a bit of a curiosity. The charge of hypocrisy is to be expected, and not entirely wrong, although it suffers from the usual problem, namely that a doctor telling you that smoking is dangerous with a pack of Marlboros on his desk isn't necessarily wrong.

So much better said then my rambling screed above. People pick up on any excuse to avoid the diagnosis. Yes, the switch to plastic straws was stupid. Yes, the rich and powerful fly on planes and own yachts.

We live in this imperfect world. If we wait for it to become "perfect" top down, we'll just wait forever. And the climate emergency does to care about our partisan concerns.

I feel so for those with children. It's clear we're leaving them a world already condemned.

> Nearly two-thirds of the plane is business class

Why is European business class so absolutely terrible?

It's a 50 minute flight. Long flights have a better business class.

Even 50 min hops in the US have something better.

These same people want to take away affordable heating from their constituents including the poor in the name of the "climate emergency". Yet, they can take a plane (that pumps huge amounts of CO2 directly into the sky) twice a week for the distance some people commute by ground _everyday_ for work. Then they only work for two days a week. I've never seen a more disgusting display of elitism.

Ah, populist anger, populist anger everywhere. You don't even know who are taking these flights, just that they're offered by Lufthansa. But sure, in your mind they're "[the] same people".

They do not only work for two days a week, come on. The European Parliament is for nearly all intents and purposes located in Brussels, the Strasbourg one is considered more of a spinoff. I seriously doubt that the parliamentarians enjoy this unnecessary monthly commute, they would certainly prefer staying in Brussels the whole time.

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