Memo to EnviroNuts: Planes need to fly there to get back

Sometimes environmentalists (and yes I am grossly stereotyping) strike me as misguided.  For example*: 

A major airline is under fire from environmentalists for flying an aircraft across the Atlantic with only five passengers on board. The flight from Chicago to London meant that the plane, a Boeing 777, used 22,000 gallons of fuel. The flight from Chicago to London meant that the plane, a Boeing 777, used 22,000 gallons of fuel.

Math Quiz time...

Suppose an empty plane is sitting in Chicago and it will cost $60,000 to fly to the UK empty, and $60,000 to fly back.  In the UK there are 300 passengers, each willing to pay $1,000 to fly on a scheduled flight to Chicago.  Choose the best option:

1. Abandon the flight from Chicago to UK, avoid paying $120,000, but give up $300,000 in revenue.  Net gain (-$180,000)
2. Fly the empty plane to the UK, incur $120,000 in costs, but gain $300,000 in revenue.  Net gain (+$180,000)

Gee, for some reason, American Airlines chose option 2.

"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.

And I love this:

Richard Dyer, Friends of the Earth's transport campaigner said: "Flying virtually empty planes is an obscene waste of fuel. Through no fault of their own , each passenger's carbon footprint for this flight is about 45 times what it would have been if the plane had been full."

The total emissions were the same whether the plane was empty or not. OK, maybe a planeful of fat Americans uses up a little extra fuel than an empty one, but you get the point.

*Hat tip to Partial Nobel Laureate Brent Sohngen for mentioning the story.

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Comments

[ryan]

Maybe they should have just commissioned Airbus to build a plane in europe really really quickly, so that the passengers in heathrow could get to the US. that definitely would have saved on carbon emissions.

[dWj]

"[E]ach passenger's carbon footprint for this flight is about 45 times what it would have been if the plane had been full."

No, no, no. Each West-bound passenger's carbon footprint was twice what it would have been.

Actually, either could in theory be valid, though the second seems better to me; it's hard to allocate fixed costs among consumers of different units, especially in an industry where price discrimination is pretty much mandatory in order to stay in business.

[Charles Young]

Clearly they need to price more flexibly.

[Larry Sheldon]

One wonders if anybody noticed that a lot of people wanted to leave London, but not many wanted to go there.

That would worry me if I were a British pol....

And if they build "Airbusses" to haul the escapees, won't we be pretty much up to here in Airbusses pretty soon, Airbusses _and_ Boings for that matter.

[John Whitehead]

Maybe they should have forced people who didn't really want to travel to board the plane until it was full?

[odograph]

Do they carry freight? Probably.

It would have been environmental to swap passengers with another carrier, but perhaps not politic.

Though ultimately Charles Young has it, a airlines "deals" blog could have filled that plane.

[reason]

Another one for tokenism. When is that "war on tokenism" starting. Higher environmental taxes and it won't happen because it will be too costly for the firm. They should concentrate on the main issues not trivialities.

[joshua corning]

Maybe they should have forced people who didn't really want to travel to board the plane until it was full?

John wins the comment section on his own post.

[joshua corning]

Clearly they need to price more flexibly.

And

Though ultimately Charles Young has it, a airlines "deals" blog could have filled that plane.

I love the zanny world these two live in...A world in which Airline companies don't try to fill their planes by using a pricing system that maximizes their efficiency and lowers their costs....and all it would take is one good environmentalist to fix the whole thing with these great concepts that ugly capitalist airline exec who earn triple digit incomes would never thing of.

They should make a video game set in that universe or at least a cartoon.

[odograph]

You are simply making a assertion Joshua, that an empty plane is "optimal."

We know as simple fact that "five passengers" did not pay for "22,000 gallons of fuel."

I think it is at least arguable that a "deals" page would pull people from other times (and other airlines) to offset that cost, and reduce the operating loss on that flight.