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 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.
“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 ...
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.
I read on NewsMax.com about this winter being a record in nearly the entire Northern Hemisphere, where snow fell in Baghdad. The article ended with “If Global Warming gets any worse, we’ll all freeze to death.â€
Friends of the Earth, are no more friends of Gaia than you or I. They are terrorists bent on destruction of USA.
I believe best course of action would be to hunt down and eliminate them from the face of earth.
However I am law abiding, therefore I will let time deal with these pox on civilization. As time always does.
I say forced indoctrination of economics, problem is that they are of such low intelligence that they would not understand course work.
Wasted time and effort.
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