Flight Shaming and Climate Change – Is this the right way?

We know that Climate Change is upon us. There are deniers and there are passionate people particularly GenZ who are currently not in the work force. On September we saw a huge outpouring where millions of people left classrooms (inspired by 16-year-old teenage protester Greta Thunberg) and work places to protest the current lack of progress by politicians. There has been an easy target – the airline industry. Estimates put the amount of contribution at between 2 and 2.5%. (Source Time) Not insignificant in the big picture scheme of things. There is some evidence that that there has been some evidence that Flight Shaming is having some impact.
Source Bloomberg (Sorry its behind a paywall).

For the purpose of this article I won’t go into the details of good or bad and the overall political battles over the topic – yet, you will have to read the preamble first. Other than I have seen with my own eyes the impact in multiple places. Singapore when the pollution index exceeded 400 (200 is considered high). Beijing where the air tastes like Charcoal. Alaska where the Permafrost is melting at an alarming rate and where towering white glaciers are now a shadow of their former selves. I personally travel more than 200,000 miles a year so that makes me a big contributor. I try every year to find ways to offset that by buying carbon offsets I have used Terrapass in the past but I do tend to shop around there are many providers.

Rather I would like to look at addressing what we can do – both in the short term and the long term to ameliorate the impact of accelerated global warming. 

For the short term it is going to be hard to address the overall demand for air travel. We have (mostly) a supply side market with airlines averaging in excess of 80% load factors.  The constraints are that when we examine these factors we see that scarce airports and popular routes skew the numbers and we see that LON-NYC is the world’s most prized revenue route generating over $1.2 Billion in revenue on just the JFK-LHR segment. Yet that is dominated by very few players. Constraints of slots and airline mergers have put up the price of a ticket. Heathrow airport is the world’s most expensive per passenger with $168 (2018) generated in airport charges and fees. At Air Black Box we developed an algorithm to find alternative routings based on rules. One of the rules we planned for but so far, no takers is a value for avoiding congested airports. We believe that bringing in Smart Routings (sm) will ultimate benefit the industry by freeing up capacity that is currently locked in legacy constraints and actually biased against these possibilities. The actual increase of emissions if a plane is empty or full – is fairly marginal. Like many forms of public conveyance, when the plane has to go, it has to go!

For the long term, I firmly believe we are making short term bad decisions. The example is Heathrow’s 3^rd runway. There is an assumption that adding the 3^rd runway will result in 50% increase in capacity at the airport. That cannot happen. Even replumbing the taxi ways and making them more efficient will not permit that to occur. Theoretical maybe. A massive change project at Chicago O’Hare that started in 2015 resulted in significant amounts of improvement from an inefficient system to a far more elegant solution. Here is a detailed review. Source Cranky Flyer Capacity can be constrained in different ways. When Seattle (my home port) added a 3^rd runway it only envisaged that 2 would be in operation at any one time. Indeed, the airport’s plan is to only grow by 2-3% a year for the next few years and probably longer because like the vast majority of the top 100 airports worldwide they are slot constrained. That adds up to 432,000 aircraft movements per year. In contrast Amsterdam with its 7 runways has 550,000 movements authorized per year. Frankly in my view we need to stop thinking of adding runways. Further we know there is only so much capacity that can be opened up through “adjustments”. 

So, I would like to advocate a different path. Airports plan in the 10-15-year time frame. 5 years ago, we could not have envisaged that commercial drone (more appropriately non-fossil fuel powered passenger) operations could be possible. Today we know better. The Europeans are far more challenges with conflicting requirements of UAV, Military and commercial. Overlay the more densely packed land space and you can see that this is tough. Thus, I am advocating a different approach. Let's abandon the use of long runways for short haul traffic. Let’s leave that for the big long-haul aircraft. In place let’s look at more efficient use of concrete with short haul 500-mile 100-seater craft-based systems. The result of this will be a significant throughput of aircraft movements. This is not without its challenges. All forms of mass transit are full of conflicts of competing requirements.

So back to the political issue. We need bold central government policies. I am advocating therefore a simple manifesto.

1. Development of new technologies. Proceeds would come from the credits and taxes would be funneled into better technologies.
2. Development of new alternative transport methods. Massive new projects such as LHR’s 3^rd Runway would be challenged if alternatives are made available.
3. A Universal Carbon Metric System. Transparency of publication of league tables and metrics at the level of all flights. The creation of a CTN – Carbon Travel Number that would allow consumers to compare different trips and know what they have to offset in order to ensure funding for carbon reducing technologies.
4. Carbon tradeable credits but not only at the airline level but also at the airport and individual level. Thus, someone who has acquired credits they can reduce the cost of their travels. A universal set of exchanges and a standard set of values. Airlines and Airports can decide also to participate so some airports could actually reduce their carbon taxes significantly by developing better solutions and be granted tax credits/incentives to better utilize their real estate.
5. A tax system from the federal level would need to be implemented. Inefficient use of runway assets with (for example) smaller aircraft would be penalized but this would be set by the government through a high taxation scale based on the footprint and scarcity value.

We need to be bold to reverse the harmful effects of human intervention. We need a new fundamental approach to the problems of aviation induced carbon generated global warming. Aviation is one of the most heavily regulated markets on the planet. If we can demonstrate this leadership now – then let’s show what we can do. Are you with me? Then you can be proud to fly smart.

Thanks for reading. 

(Photo a screen grab from CNN) 

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