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Brussels Airlines makes 3,000 unnecessary flights to maintain airport slots
- Rastonbury 5y agoThis issue looks like something solvable through policy like the container stacking limit in port of LA if it gain enought traction. Would require governments to make airports "freeze" slots for some period of time?
- windsurfer 5y agoA carbon tax would solve this.
- osrec 5y agoHow so (genuinely interested to learn)?
- windsurfer 5y agoBy charging a tax upon fossil fuel use it discourages the use of fossil fuels. It uses the market to control pollution and companies would be forced to consider the full environmental cost of their actions due to it impacting the price.
- acta_non_verba 5y agoYou genuinely think a carbon tax would cost more than all the other costs associated with flying an empty plane? Pilots, cabin crew, ground services, fuel, depreciation of the aircraft, landing fees, ATC service fees, etc? It wouldn’t be. The massive cost already isn’t stopping it.
- asteroidbelt 5y agoThere’s no goal to reduce emissions from planes. There’s a goal to reduce overall emissions. If (hypothetically) co2 tax would lead to reduction in other industries but keep emissions unchanged in planes, this is fine.
- osrec 5y agoBut would it be enough to make airlines relinquish lucrative slots? I personally feel the problem is more related to a bogus slot allocation/deallocation policy that forces an airline to fly an empty plane around to hold a slot. Could they not just remove that rather pointless requirement, and have some sort of market based approach to auction slots for a set period (say 1 year at a time)?!
- sofixa 5y ago> Could they not just remove that rather pointless requirement, and have some sort of market based approach to auction slots for a set period (say 1 year at a time)?! The whole point of the current system is to combat old carriers that had local monopolies and refused to allow competition ( e.g. British Airways at Heathrow). Such a carrier could afford to spend money to prevent competitors from flying from their hubs, making themselves the only ( and thus more expensive) option. The regulation is good, it just needs more fine tuning ( e.g. they should add a minimal passenger and/or cargo load, to make sure the flights aren't there just to keep the slots and are actually used).
- osrec 5y agoUnderstood. Yeah, I imagine they need to fine tune things to account for pandemics and other extenuating circumstances. I guess during the last pandemic of this scale, there wasn't really much of an aviation industry.
- sofixa 5y agoThey already did, the slot needs to "only" be used at 50% (it was 80-90% before), but obviously that isn't enough ( which couldn't have been easily predicted though, the pandemic is constantly evolving).
- colechristensen 5y agoI doubt it. If you make fuel more expensive tickets will be more expensive and these empty flights will be a quite similar proportion of cost for airlines because the tax is the same with or without passengers.
- dehrmann 5y agoOr drop the requirement to actually use the slot and raise the price, instead. A carbon tax pushes out marginal player in a convoluted way.
- madiator 5y agoThis may pale in comparison, but relatedly, some people make arguably unnecessary trips to keep their airline status.
- schrijver 5y agoThis info is not entirely correct: the sources they cite (in French and Dutch) say Brussels airlines is planning to make 3000 unnecessary flights. The mother company Lufthansa published this news themselves, I presume they also hope the rules get changed. Not that one should have sympathy for the airline, but it’s good to keep the facts straight.
- metadat 5y agoI find this unacceptable. Is there a list exposing such assholery so I can boycott accordingly?
- AdamJacobMuller 5y agoDepends who you think the asshole is in this situation? Airports? EU? Belgium? Lufthansa? Brussels Air?
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- jdavis703 5y agoThe buck stops with the airlines. Many airlines have been accused of colluding with “free market” ticket prices. Surely they could also enact a gentleman’s agreement not to “steal” each other’s slots until travel demand is back to 2019 levels?
- lstodd 5y agoThe issue is keeping crews from forgetting how to fly the aircraft. Or do you want another round of 737MAX because noone actually flown a plane in 6 months, since it was considered somehow better for enviroment?
- jdavis703 5y agoThe 737 Max crash wasn’t because of scarce flight hours. It was caused because the training procedures didn’t train pilots on how to recover from MCAS failure (and ultimately because MCAS itself was flawed). Has any transportation safety board cited flight hours as a cause in any of the crashes?
- lstodd 5y agoThe thing is, guys who actually knew what's a runaway stabilizer condition feels like managed to cope. It's the ones who didn't didn't. Somehow I think this is actually related to the hours flown. Not entirely, but should we take these chances? edit: Okay, that was exaggerated. Still, without regular practice the only thing there will be is more of perfectly avoidable crashes. We cannot trade people lives for some theoretical reduction in emissions.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- duxup 5y agoMeanwhile I don’t I’ve been on a not full or nearly full flight in years… I miss those random low headcount flights :(
- skohan 5y agoWhereas in the US necessary flights have been cancelled left and right. I had to take a series of flights in the past two weeks, and it was an absolute mess. By the third trip, I honestly had no expectation that my flight would take off on time, if at all. That and getting a PCR test this week in the NYC area seems totally non-functional. Appointments have to be made days in advance, for results which can several days to come back. It's a far cry form Germany where I can get same day service at any number of testing centers, and pay to get expedited results if I need to. How can these systems be so broken, and why isn't capitalism solving them?
- ThalesX 5y ago> How can these systems be so broken, and why isn't capitalism solving them? I’d wager it’s because free markets solve problems not entrenched cronies with political strings.
- NikolaeVarius 5y agoI dont understand. COVID tests are completely free, subsidized by the government. You can get COVID tests at very high prices on the "black market". If you don't want to pay those prices, you stand on line at the free testing areas. Why do you think capitalism is broken here when its working just fine. The supply of testing is too low since its free to take them officially and there is massive demand
- skohan 5y agoAre you talking about PCR tests, or antigen tests? All I can tell you is that this week, my Aunt and I were both flying out of EWR. She needed a PCR test for the flight which was supposed to be Tuesday, and she started looking on Friday, but it was almost impossible to find anywhere with an appointment available before Thursday. And even those gave a very fuzzy 1-3 day estimate for results, which is quite unhelpful when you have to take the test within 72 hours of departure. She spent an entire day trying to find somewhere which would take walk-ins, and eventually found a place through a fiend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend who could get her in, although she did have to push the flight back by a day. From my perspective, this just seemed totally broken. I don't understand how there could not be a vendor, easily discoverable through Google which could deliver same-day or next-day results at whatever price the market would bear, even if it was $300 or $500 or whatever. It felt like being in a developing country where things just can't be depended on to work properly.
- JCharante 5y agoI've been really grateful for airlines like Qatar Airways continuing to run their mostly empty flights. I've been on a flight with just 8 people in economy & business and most recently one with 30. I know people can call it wasteful, most things we do are wasteful, but it really means a lot when it's already a huge headache to get the paperwork to board the flight and I can't imagine having to worry about the flight being cancelled.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoI don't understand how "we didn't sell enough seats" is a legit reason to cancel a flight. If I book a flight, I'm not getting that money back if I can't fly for any reason. But the airline can just decide "nah, I don't feel like upholding my part of the contract"?
- epa 5y agoYou need to read the terms and conditions you agreed to when you book.
- sho_hn 5y agoThis isn't true. You can refund on flight cancellation.
- pb7 5y agoHe’s saying if he books the ticket and decides that he doesn’t want to fly for whatever reason, he’s not getting his money back if the flight doesn’t get canceled but that doesn’t seem to be the case for the airline.
- skohan 5y agoIsn't that generally the case? I have never seen a situation where the airline cancelled a flight and didn't have to refund the passengers or offer another flight. Maybe a secondary/discount travel agency would make it hard to get a refund, but I'm pretty sure an airline can't just not fly you and keep your money. I was refunded a flight just last week in the US. And in Europe, there are laws on the books that the airline has to take care of you if there's an extensive delay. For instance, they have to pay for a meal at the airport if you have to wait for more than a few extra hours, and put you up at an airport if it's going to be overnight or offer a replacement train ticket.
- bouncycastle 5y agoI think this article reporting may be incomplete. Surely they also carry cargo underneath?
- tapvt 5y agoThank you for bringing this up. I’d not considered the cargo aspect.
- airocker 5y agoAirlines can control prices if they maintain airport slots. This may be in play here.
- frankfrankfrank 5y agoYes. The whole system for how our airlines and airports are managed is an utter farce. I understand that Airlines need predictability, however that should not come at the massive cost of the flying public by creating de facto monopolies/cartel environments.
- idiot900 5y agoAlthough I'm unfamiliar with the details, the pilots need to continue flying to maintain their type ratings. Perhaps Lufthansa/Brussels Airlines could have used single-engine propeller planes (think Cessna 172 or the many other aircraft in its class) to decrease the cost and environmental impact?
- lstodd 5y agoLike how you are going to maintain your 737 or 320 rating flying a Cessna? Besides, I suppose keeping a plane in storage and serviced while keeping your workforce certified and ready isn't that much cheaper than keeping all them somewhat flying.
- jpgvm 5y agoIf you mothball a plane for 2 years it requires a huge amount of work before it's qualified to fly again. Probably not higher cost than the total work of maintaining it in flying condition for those 2 years but the man-hours are a lot easier to manage when amortized over that period vs all at once.
- post_break 5y agoWhen I think of global warming it's stuff like this that makes me chuckle. I can try to reduce my emissions, but the system is built for unlimited fuel burning. Leaving the oven on with the door open so you don't miss your chance to bake cookies.
- dijonman2 5y agoWouldn’t it be more effective to chase China and India instead of squeezing the last few bits out of the rest of the world?
- post_break 5y agoSure, but the idea of flying empty planes to maintain airport slots, while banning diesel or gas cars is giving me whiplash.
- 5etho 5y ago>3000 flights >squeezing the last few bits tell that to .us companies that manufacture in China since 70s
- vkou 5y agoOnly if your idea of fairness is five for me, and one for you. India's entire CO2 output is less than half that of the United States, by the way, and its per-capita output is one-eighth. [1] (And gods only know much methane is leaking from American wells. We really aren't interested in counting that.) If you're going to put the squeeze on someone, it should be on the latter... But because we aren't going to squeeze ourselves, we deflect, deflect, deflect. [1] Since it seems to get by on emitting one-eighth what we do, it sounds like there's plenty left to squeeze from our emissions.
- simonhorlick 5y agoThe USA is the 2nd largest emitter of CO2, on a per-capita basis it's almost double that of China.
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- frankfrankfrank 5y agoThis is not just something that this airline does. There are MANY airlines that do that, especially internationally, but also domestically in the USA. The reason you likely aren't aware is that you fly at times when the routes are popular. In the USA there is also a totally different issue, Congressional pork barrel that, e.g., subsidizes a route or even whole airline that serves the interest of a single Congressman so he does not have to take longer routes or fly on limited schedules. There are even famous instances of whole airports being built/funded for that very reason.
- anovikov 5y agoThat sounds hard to believe because why won't a congressman just fly private jet? If this is true, then maybe Russian-style corruption among politicians isn't such a bad thing, because it results, at least in this case, in much less waste.
- dehrmann 5y agoCongressmen "only" (this is a lot for 95% of Americans) make ~$200k. They fly commercial. Except Biden. He took the train.
- batch12 5y agoI have been on a plane flying coach with a senator sitting directly behind me.
- anovikov 5y agoWhy do they do that? Just to show off to their constituents how egalitarian they are? People must be truly dumb if they buy into it.
- iratewizard 5y agoMaybe they don't value the cost of first class. Don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to personal taste.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoThe obvious solution would be to require certain minimum passenger numbers per slot.
- saddlerustle 5y agoNo, the obvious solution is to allocate slots by auction instead of arbitrary rules set by the government.
- sofixa 5y agoThat'd how things were before, and it didn't work - there were just local monopolies by carriers who'd prefer not to have competitors and jack up the prices. Those "arbitrary" rules try to ensure competition.
- adrianN 5y agoJust make the fuel more expensive so that flying below capacity becomes more expensive.
- sohkamyung 5y agoSilly question: are the flight safety messages still played, and performed by air crew, on these empty flights? I believe it is a 'mandatory' requirement for passenger flights.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoI once flew on a 767 with five passengers in total due to the airport being shutdown by a blizzard. We still got the safety brief. I was the only one in coach and a stewardess offered to let me sit up front if I wanted.
- pyuser583 5y agoI once flew on an airlines “going back” flight. I was the only passenger in the plane. They let me roll up the arms of the seats in the center and sleep across four seats like they were a bed. They still did the safety message.
- bamboozled 5y agoGood thing I don't drive and instead walk everywhere, even when pressed for time...
- Ansil849 5y agoIs there some sort of service that identifies these planned-to-be-nearly-empty flights so that you can book them? I would absolutely love to be on a near-empty flight instead of a congested flight, and my schedule is such that I can fly out at more or less whichever time of day I want, so this would be extremely beneficial to me. Or failing a dedicated service for this, is there at least a manual way of finding out which flights are going to be near-empty?
- feupan 5y agoI don’t think this kind of data is known outside the airline. As far as I know public data is limited to available tickets and classes on a specific path.
- Ansil849 5y agoIf available ticket data is available, isn't that sufficient to map something like this? I'm just thinking outloud, but something which queries a ticket broker for a large number of tickets for each flight, and if the return is consistently that more than n% of tickets are available, the flight gets added as low-book.
- 19h 5y agoThis data definitely is available via GDS like Amadeus and Sabre.
- sokoloff 5y agoIf the airline offers seat selection while booking, you could just look at the seat map.
- Ansil849 5y ago> If the airline offers seat selection while booking Which airlines do this? I genuinely think I've never seen the option to select seats while booking.
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- vishnugupta 5y ago(Pedantic) It served a purpose so it wasn’t unnecessary after all :-)
- xyst 5y agowhy did we bail out the airline industry again?
- gfykvfyxgc 5y ago
- xg15 5y agoEarly pandemic memory: I remember this issue was in the (german) news for a time in march 2020 when it slowly dawned on everyone that almost all the planes we were watching in the sky were empty - most people had either stopped travelling on their own or were prevented so by travel bans. The airlines were only flying the planes as to not lose the slots. EU institutions acted reshingly quick in that situation and suspended the rule for some time. After that point, flight traffic in Europe came to a virtual standstill as everyone went into lockdown. It's a bit disappointing to read that the rule is back in action and apparently with the same results as before.
- hulitu 5y agoDon't worry. They will ask now for help from the state because they had loses (see Lufthansa 2020).
- avidphantasm 5y agoThis is madness. We are doomed to climate disaster without central planning.
- WithinReason 5y agoThe rule originated from central planning.
- arisAlexis 5y agoThis is the real proof of work, POW