With Friends Like These...

There's a group called "Friends of the Earth that is all upset at American Airlines for flying 5 passengers from Chicago to London on a Boeing 777.

From the UK Telegraph:

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.

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.

I know a little about the commercial airplane business.  I don't work in that business, but I've taken a few aviation oriented logistics classes so I have at least a rudimentary idea of how things work.  The first thing I know is that this cost a lot of money.  The article says  £30,000 or almost $60,000 to fly that one way.  That means it was not some ramp rat that decided to let that airplane fly.  Someone at a fairly high executive level made the decision to  fly that airplane.

Here's the deal.  An airline is like any other business.  They have a certain amount of inventory they must sell at a certain amount in order to make a profit.  Ford works in a similar fashion.  They have an inventory of vehicles they must sell at a certain price.  The difference is that Ford can shift its inventory to other places if they have a surplus in one area and a demand in another.  They do it all the time. 

An airline's inventory is seats.  They must sell a seat on that airplane or lose it.  They can't send that seat from Chicago to Detroit without sending a whole plane.  Essentially, when that airplane backs out of the gate, whatever empty seats are on it are gone and can not be sold, transferred or otherwise generate income.

The Eco-nuts can whine all they want, but airlines don't like to fly jets with any empty seats.  Empty seats are lost inventory and lost inventory is lost money.  They don't need the "Friends of the Earth to tell them it's a big waste. 

The airline business is extremely competitive.  They had to get that airplane over there regardless of loss because to not do that meant a bigger loss.  If American Airlines failed to pick up their passengers from London, they not only lose that particular piece of business that day, they stand a chance of losing a lot of business in the future on that West bound leg.  The ripple effect could mean a potential loss of thousands of customers.  A full 777 carries around 245 people.  If you strand those people, they will tell their friends who will tell their friends.  The potential loss of business is significant enough to move the empty airplane.

With the cost of fuel these days, the airlines are not inclined to burn one more drop of fuel than is absolutely necessary.  They are in business to make a profit.  I'm willing to bet money that's a concept that that these socialist "friends" are dead set against.

VW

Comments

[BobF]

Passengers aren't the only thing airliners carry. They also carry cargo. Sometimes this cargo is human organs needed NOW and other arrangements can't be made. When my first wife had a bone marrow transplant, the marrow came from a donor in Europe. Since timing was critical, it had to be in Kansas withing a certain hours of harvesting and to not get it there was certain death for her. These enviro-wackos have no idea if anyone's life depended upon that aircraft getting to London as scheduled.