Eco-Scandal! AA Plane Flies 5 Passengers From US To London

Dateline Huffington!

" 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.

Friends of the Earth said it was ‘obscene’ to waste so much fuel flying an almost empty plane

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."

huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/0 … 90032.html

“…also this just in. Electricity consumption spiked yesterday as the eco- conscious turned on thier lap tops in outrage to read this article and drink double mocha half-caf’s at StarBucks. Al Gore, flying over the midwest enroute to a speaking engagment, could not be reached for comment.”

Would’ve used a lot more fuel if it was fully loaded!!! :laughing:

Read the whole story here.

Plane flies five passengers from US to London
By David Millward, Transport Editor
Last Updated: 1:55am GMT 06/03/2008

A major airline is under fire from environmentalists for flying an aircraft across the Atlantic with only five passengers on board.

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The flight from Chicago to London meant that the plane, a Boeing 777, used 22,000 gallons of fuel.

Friends of the Earth said it was ‘obscene’ to waste so much fuel flying an almost empty plane
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.

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It is estimated that each passenger produced 43 tons of CO2 consuming enough fuel to carry a Ford Mondeo around the world five times.

Operating the near empty flight is estimated as having cost American about 30,000. But a spokesman said it had no alternative.

"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.

“We sought alternative flights for the west-bound passengers but heavy loads out of London that day meant that this was not possible.”

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.”

telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh … ane105.xml

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.

This is all that needs to be said, they would have ferried it empty if it came down to it.

I don’t know about y’all, but I would have loved to had been on that flight :slight_smile:

There was a British flight a few years ago that had mechanical problems. The passengers were all placed on other flights. One person, however, decided to fly with the original aircraft. This person had a 747 all to himself (herself? forgot which gender and can’t find anything on the web) from Hong Kong to London!

I’ll bet the service was fantastic.

So what about all the sports charters flying empty getting to and from the home base? Why aren’t the greenies complaining about that? Like Delta flying an empty 763 ATL-SAN to pick up the Chargers for example. And that kind of thing happens MUCH more often than this isolated incident.

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This is all that needs to be said, they would have ferried it empty if it came down to it.

Question: Are there published numbers of daily flights to realign aircraft, i.e. repositioning for scheduling purposes, that occur each day? :question:

I think it all boils down to this one thing: these so called environmentalists are badly deceived into thinking that mankind is going to destroy the world.

While I’m not for purposely destroying the environment, I am smart enough to know that whatever the human race does the environment, the environment will heal itself.

These do-gooders should be bitching at people like Al “these suckers pay me a lot to give them inconvenient BS” Gore who goes flying around the world in aircraft that get worse passengers miles per gallon than airliners.

Yes, I italicized “mental” in the word “environmentalists” because many of them are mental cases.

…I am smart enough to know that whatever the human race does the environment, the environment will heal itself. …

This not the forum to debate your absolute conviction that man has or cannot do irreversible harm to planet earth. Others clearly will differ with you on this issue. Areas of concern that appear to be reaching tipping points are,

  • Arctic sea-ice melt
  • Greenland ice sheet decay
  • West Antarctic ice sheet decay
  • Atlantic thermohaline circulation collapse
  • El Nino Southern Oscillation increase
  • Indian summer monsoon collapse
  • Sahara/Sahel greening and West African monsoon disruption
  • Amazon rainforest dieback
  • Boreal Forest dieback
    tinyurl.com/2jrtdh
    :open_mouth:

I LOVE IT! He states “(t)his not the forum to debate your absolute conviction…” then decides its okay to state his. Gotta love them liberals!

In any case, it was just a few decades ago that we were being warned about the coming ice age. My, how things have changed!

Anyway, this is my last word in this topic about it. I’m going outside to enjoy the global warming brought about by mankind. (I wish! It’s freezing ass cold outside! And this is the San Francisco area!)

…it was just a few decades ago that we were being warned about the coming ice age…

What lifetime was that? Neanderthal Man.

See discussions.flightaware.com/view … 6442#46442

Banter/global warming discussion in the banter thread, please.

I’d sure rather have been on this flight than the 99% full, @ 30 kids “Romper Room Express” (flight attendant’s own words) on NWA552 today (MSP-BWI).

While I agree the evidence that human activity is causing global warming is questionable, I think you’ve gone way too far in this statement. For example, the coral reefs in certain areas are gone due to pollution. Hard to say whether that will last forever, but they will be gone for at least generations. Fish populations are well below sustainable level in certain places and will not return if we don’t stop overfishing. Some species are extinct. No amount of time will bring them back. So you can’t really say that the environment can always “heal itself”.

Of course if a species is extinct, for whatever reason, it can’t come back. But I still stand by my assertion that nature will heal itself given time.

It takes a special kind of mind to say (in two consecutive sentences no less) that they won’t change their opinion even after acknowledging a valid counter-example to their opinion.