Posted on 03/05/2008 6:28:39 AM PST by Entrepreneur
A major airline is under fire from environmentalists for flying an aircraft across the Atlantic with only five passengers on board.
American Airlines has been accused of reckless behaviour It led to American Airlines being accused of reckless behaviour by green lobby groups.
The latest eco- scandal flight took place on February 9 after American was forced to cancel one of its four daily services from Chicago to London.
While it was able to find places for nearly all the passengers on the fully-booked flight, five still had to be accommodated. Those who did fly were upgraded to the business class cabin.
But while they enjoyed lavish hospitality, the airline was accused of an obscene waste of fuel by Friends of the Earth.
With such a small passenger load we did consider whether we could cancel the flight and re-accommodate the five remaining passengers on other flights.
However, this would have left a plane load of west-bound passengers stranded in London Heathrow who were due to fly back to the US on the same aircraft.
Richard Dyer, Friends of the Earths transport campaigner said: Flying virtually empty planes is an obscene waste of fuel. Through no fault of their own , each passengers carbon footprint for this flight is about 45 times what it would have been if the plane had been full.
Governments must stop granting the aviation industry the unfair privileges that allow this to happen by taxing aviation fuel and including emissions from aviation in international agreements to tackle climate change.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
The socialist reveals his true colors.
Think the enviros will go after Travolta...

Actor John Travolta's Florida Home
Of course, Travolta probably buys carbon credits from the greenies.
And just how many are on AlGore’s planes?.................
No mention of private jets with one or two passengers flying to global climate conferences at some remote island villa.
Richard Dyer, Friends of the Earths transport campaigner said: Flying virtually empty planes is an obscene waste of fuel. Through no fault of their own , each passengers carbon footprint for this flight is about 45 times what it would have been if the plane had been full.
Mr Dyer, mind your own business. You mind your carbon foot print and let the rest of us mind ours.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
This happened to me once. It was the most wonderful thing.
Transatlantic flights with empty seats are a gift from God. The only time I’ve ever been able to sleep on a plane is when I’m able to lay across three seats. Glorious.
I also note that these people never said a peep whenever “activists” are flown halfway across the world to friggin’ Bali for one of their ridiculous conferences.
I seem to recall that British Airways does the same thing. They have to in order to keep their gates at key airports.
How many passengenrs are on a FedEx flight? The pilots. That’s it.
It’s also amzing how stupid these people are in that they don’t even understand the way air travel works. Just because nobody is getting on a plane in Chicago, doesn’t mean 200 peoople aren’t waiting to get on that flight in London.
Sheesh. Haven’t these people ever been to an airport.
How do these idiots think planes get delivered overseas? By ship? I’d like to apply my carbon footprint to their a$$.
Meanwhile 200 passengers in Heathrow are standing at the gate wondering “Where’s our plane?”
No mention of private jets with one or two passengers flying to global climate conferences at some remote island villa.
I wish I could have been on that plane!
The last 3 transatlantic flights I was on were completely stuffed.
You can take my boarding pass from my cold dead fingers, green freaks!
Almost every airliner, new or used, is flown without passengers when it's delivered to its buyer. The same is true of small, corporate jets. Thousands of jets fly empty all over the world, ALL THE TIME.
Oh, man. Talk about a dream transatlantic flight. I wouldn’t have stopped drinking for a moment.
Planes are not idled. The plane with only 5 passengers had another route to service upon landing. They don’t send them home empty to run again. What should AA have done to the rest of its schedule because the one flight went off light?
I bet the cargo holds were full. Airlines make a lot of money from cargo.
When Al Gore, "Mr. Green" himself, was Vice-President, he would fly Air Force Two, a Boeing 707, from Washington D.C. to Nashville, Tennessee, on election day so he could make the roughly 100 mile round trip motorcade trip to Smith County so HE COULD VOTE!
Besides the monumental waste of taxpayer-bought aircraft fuel, the jerk's motorcade of government-fueled vehicles would tie up thousands of idling vehicles and police cars while he rode like a Roman Caesar on the interstate highways.
If he wasn't such an asshole and a hypocrite, he could have cast an absentee ballot, a tiny "carbon footprint," as a mere mortal might do.
No mention at all.
The hipocricy of the left is truely an amazing, mind blowing thing that never fails to astound me.
What is weird is that it doesn’t surprise me either.
If you look at it in terms of passenger-miles, the airplane is much more economical. CSX, the railroad, is actually running some very good commercials around here in which they state that while a hybrid that gets 50 mpg is nice, their trains can haul one ton of cargo 423 miles on one gallon of fuel. The locomotive doesn’t get 423 mpg, of course, but with hundreds or thousands of tons pulled along behind, it becomes extremely efficient.
}:-)4
-—Through no fault of their own , each passengers carbon footprint for this flight is about 45 times what it would have been if the plane had been full.
I love that statement. Hey genius...that aircraft is probably emitting virtually the same amount of pollution into the air whether it has 5 passengers or 300. Who cares what each passenger’s ‘carbon footprint’ is???
What you're saying is true, but it's not as emotionally satisfying..
He's an idiot. Let him spout. It just exposes him even more.
Also happened to me in the 70s from Chicago - Anchorage - Tokyo. 747 with maybe 20 passengers. It was nice — but eerie at the same time.
Anyone who has flown on a near-empty aircraft should realize this is usually the case.
I’m curious what the cargo mileage is on those mongo freight oceanliners. I bet it’s much better than trains. Still we need a speed to efficiency conversion formula to do these apple/orange compares. If an oceanliner or train or Toyota Prius ran at 500mph like an airliner their mileage would be astronomically terrible.
What a bunch of nut bags!
You suppose the idiots never heard of “backhaul”? Do they think all trucks and ships run 100% full all the time? Are the hundreds of container ships arriving from China all full of goods when they return from West Coast ports to China?
This is a perfect illustration why leftists cannot understand capitalism or be capitalists.
Deep down they’re just jealous that they weren’t on the flight .
They don’t like to, but airlines fly EMPTY planes from time to time.
What do you do when a plane is in Alaska and you need it in Chicago, but there are no passengers that want to go there? You fly it EMPTY. Truck drivers have the same conundrum. You drive from LA to Seattle with a load of lettuce and then hope to have something in your truck on the return trip.
These greenies are goofy and ignorant. I have found it is very productive to ignore the opinion of those ignorant of the subject on which they have an opinion.
That makes me think: what's the total carbon footprint of a national election, people traveling to polling sites. I would love to see voting by mail for the simple reason that a stamp would function as a poll tax. And putting the ballot properly into an envelope would function as an IQ test. If you try to charge a want-it-free Democrat 42 cents they just won't vote.
Richard Dyer, Friends of the Earths transport campaigner said: Flying virtually empty planes is an obscene waste of fuel. Through no fault of their own , each passengers carbon footprint for this flight is about 45 times what it would have been if the plane had been full.
Mr Dyer, mind your own business. You mind your carbon foot print and let the rest of us mind ours.”
Sir;
Please go to your friends at ELF and speak to them about the complete waste of resources they caused this week when they burned down 6 large homes in one development.
Make no mistake, the homes will be rebuilt. That will now take twice the amount of materials.
The
Street of Dreams” admission money which goes to charity will not be going there this year. The recipients of that money must be VERY PROUD of ELF’s behavior and of your friends.
ELS, ALF, and others of their ilk are nothing more than terrorists. They need to see prison until they die.
Obviously, the new planes should be delivered by ship. Maybe design a “plane carrier” that stacks them like cars.
Oh, and what’s with flight-testing an empty plane? They should wait until the first commercially-sold flight to test it!
I once piloted a 14 hour flight to Africa with only one passenger on board. He was treated like royalty. The amazing thing is, the flight made money because of the absolutely critical 10,000 lbs. of cargo we were carrying.
I flew round trip to Switzerland in 1991 for $250.00 on an American Airlines flight — with 16 passengers upgraded to Business Class — because geography-challenged Americans were terrified of flying during the Gulf War ... I bunked with friends in Zurich and spent a week skiing at Interlaken, had a wonderful time, and three weeks later decamped for New Zealand for three weeks.
I expect this kind of thing happens a lot, but it doesn’t get much publicity.

Interlaken is wonderful, isn’t it? We went up the road to Wengen, Lauterbrunen and Grindelwald. Incredible country.
Indeed it is. That little train that goes up through the ski areas is as much fun as skiing down!
Little funny sidenote: I was on the funicular heading up the Jungfrau and chit-chatting with a lady in the seat ahead of me, happened to mention that I had come up skiing to get away from CNN (my friends in Zurich had it — in English—and were glued to it day and night) and she said, “Oh, do you have CNN in English? We called ahead to our hotel to ask if they had CNN and they said they do, and so they do — BUT IT’S IN GERMAN!”
Or for that matter, let us talk of empty school busses after they drop off the kids. Or worse, empty (or nearly empty) metro busses and commuter trains during off-peak hours.
Greens are mostly kids and I use this phrase on them sometimes when I see them trying to get signatures, etc.: “I like you. You remind me of myself when I was young and stupid.”
What a crock! Cry to big daddy govt. because the Airline paid for its fuel to fly 5 people. What’s obscene is that this makes news.
Looking at this reporter's article The ostrich approach to air travel which appears on Mr. Millward's blog area at the Telegraph, it appears clear to me that Mr. Millward is a strong believer in anthropogenic global warming, and equally clearly it appears to me that it shows in the posted article's advocacy journalism.
Somebody ought to leave a carbon boot-print on Richard Dyer’s hiney.
During the 70’s when we lived in Australia, we flew back and forth between there and the US several times. The planes were always half empty. It was great, we’d each get our own window seat and the whole row too. I used to love flying. Now I hate any flights longer than about an hour because they’re so crowded.
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