BA jumbo flies 6,000 miles (and burns 5,400 carloads of fuel) with all its 300 seats empty

The Daily Mail (UK) ^ | Last updated at 00:03am on 16th March 2008 | CHRISTOPHER LEAKE

[Paleo Conservative]

British Airways has sparked an environmental row by flying a jumbo jet 6,000 miles to Hong Kong without a single passenger on board.

The Boeing 747 made the 11-hour trip manned by just four flightdeck crew, while all 300 seats behind them remained empty.

During its journey from Heathrow, BA Flight 0027 burned a massive 140 tons of fuel – the equivalent of filling 5,400 family-sized cars – and emitted 329 tons of CO2.

Passengers due to board the aircraft last Sunday were told by BA staff that not enough cabin crew were available for duty and they caught a later flight.

It is thought that scores more planes are being flown without passengers all over the world.

Today, another BA jumbo due to fly from Heathrow to Bombay in India is expected to have no passengers on both its outward and return journeys. The 9,000-mile round trip will burn at least 200 tons of fuel and emit 486 tons of CO2.

BA claims on its website that it is "leading the climate change debate" in the aviation industry to reduce the carbon footprint and that the "most senior people at British Airways are taking a leading role".

It adds: "Together, we promote technology that helps limit the impact of aircraft."

But Greenpeace climate campaigner Anna Jones said: "Aviation is now responsible for 13 per cent of the UK's impact on the climate, and this figure is rising fast.

"While the airlines tell us they desperately need new terminals and runways, they fly empty planes halfway across the world.

"Gordon Brown needs to get a grip on this industry before its wastefulness ruins our chances of tackling climate change."

And Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Peter Ainsworth said last night: "This is a stark example of the perverse way in which the aviation industry works.

"It is utterly ludicrous that at a time of growing public concern about aviation's contribution to climate change, British Airways is operating ghost flights in order to keep its take-off and landing slots at airports."

A BA spokesman said that although the flights did not have any passengers, they carried extra freight.

He added: "The flights would have flown as part of the schedule anyway, so no extra emissions are being created.

"This is about minimising customer inconvenience wherever possible and ensuring that as many flights in our schedule operate as planned."

[umgud]

Theoretically, you could actually freeze that into dry ice and weigh it.

Makes much more sense now, especially since I'm talking "theoretical" anyway.

I think I can work with and understand your computations now. Thanks.

[VeniVidiVici]

Cargo. That's a very good reason to fly.

That was my point.

[CIDKauf]

I think they good at least paint the dang plane GREEN!

[Yo-Yo]

So how can 6 lbs make 22 lbs, even if a gallon of gas is all carbon it can not happen. Oh, and the air that gets burned with that gallon of gas is aprox. .038% CO2.

In the basic hydrocarbon combustion formula, hydrogen from the fuel is burned with Oxygen from the atmosphere to form water. At the same time, the carbon in the fuel combines with oxygen in the atmosphere to form carbon dioxide. In a jet engine, the air to fuel ratio is roughly 60 to 1, so for every unit of fuel, you are also using 60 units of air, but you get that free from the atmosphere.

HC+O₂=Heat+H₂O+CO₂

As you can see from the above simplified equation, every carbon molecule in the fuel gets combined with two oxygen molecules from the atmosphere and gets spit out the back of the jet engine as carbon dioxide.

The atomic weight of carbon is 12 and oxygen is 16, so for every carbon atom in the fuel, you create a carbon dioxide molecule that weighs 44 atomic units. That ratio 12 to 44 is close enough to the article's claims of 140 tons of fuel and 329 tons of CO₂ to know that we're at least in the ballpark with our simplified equations.

Same goes for your automobile. You're gulping a heck of a lot more air through the air filter (thus more mass) than you are sucking from the gas tank.

Therefore the weight of the tailpipe emissions is much more than the weight of the gasoline used.

[Zeppelin]

I heard that they had the Air conditioning of full with all the windows open, were smoking cigarettes, eating junk food and listening to Rush Limbaugh... O and the co-pilot was cleaning gun, which was a Dale Earnhardt signature springfield XD-9

You forgot to mention they were transporting "freedom fighters" (who were being waterboarded at the time) and that the pilots took a slight detour to drop a bomb on an abortion clinic along the way.

[Andonius_99]

I thought it felt a little warmer today...

[Lord_Calvinus]

In related news, several million Greens breathed valuable oxygen causing 589 tons of CO2 pollution today without a thought in their heads. Unfortunately, they simply can’t be shot as their festering corpses would cause other environmental concerns.

[BerryDingle]

No, it's not. It's called repositioning.

I had that happen to me once. I was on my way back from Alaska and the airline I had tickets for went on strike. I was at SEATAC. After a 12 hour wait, a connection was found in Portland for me and they had to shuttle a 747 with crew down there. I was the only passenger on that flight with 12 stewardesses.

[So Cal Rocket]

I was on my way back from Alaska and the airline I had tickets for went on strike. I was at SEATAC. After a 12 hour wait, a connection was found in Portland for me and they had to shuttle a 747 with crew down there. I was the only passenger on that flight with 12 stewardesses.

Sounds like the beginning of a Penthouse Forum letter...

[UCANSEE2]

“The math works because Oxygen is 16 times heavier than Hydrogen and even heavier than Carbon itself, and each Carbon picks up two of them.”

So, if we keep putting C02 into the air, the sky will truly fall????????

How much C02 did Mt. St. Helens put into the air, and why aren’t we all dead?

[UCANSEE2]

“You get the great increase in mass because the weight of the oxygen attached to the carbon is more than 10 times the weight of the hydrogen whose place it’s taking.”

Increase in ‘mass’ or density???

Where does the oxygen come from?

What happens to the C02 that goes into our atmosphere? Does it stay C02?

[RonF]

It's actually an increase in mass. Density is mass/volume. As a gas CO₂ has a low density, but the atmosphere is pretty big and even with a low density, there's plenty of mass. The O₂ comes from the atmosphere. Some of the CO₂ in the atmosphere eventually is picked up by water to form H₂CO₃, a.k.a. carbonic acid. That's carried to the surface as the famous acid rain. This can take a while, and having the pH of ponds and lakes and seas and oceans drop is not a great thing for numerous reasons. Some of the CO₂ in the atmosphere is picked up by green plants and incorporated into various organic molecules, liberating O₂ into the atmosphere. All free oxygen in the atmosphere is created by plants. If plants and certain kinds of bacteria did not exist, there would be very little free oxygen in the atmosphere; it would all combine with other chemicals. Mars is a good example; there's a huge amount of oxygen tied up in the red rust that gives the planet it's color.

[hattend]

How do you get 460 tons of CO2 out of 200 tons of fuel? That’s not possible.

[GOP_1900AD]

OMG, those Earth destroying bast@## - they ferried a plane! String them up! /s