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Lufthansa’s European Union Strasbourg “shuttle”
- melenaboija 4y agoIt seems EU politicians believe in climate change, until they have to catch a bus for a couple of hours… BTW, I am a EU citizen worried about climate change and tired of recycling at home to sometimes see this kind of hypocrisy of some politicians.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> seeing this kind of hypocrisy of some politicians No need for hypocrisy. Those of us who see flight shame as a bit silly can fly. Others can not. I assume the same applies for EU politicians.
- pfortuny 4y agoIt is hypocrisy because these trips are official ones, so they are essentially paid by us (the citizens). And these are the bureaucrats telling us to use clean vehicles. It is not hypocrisy in the sense you state, certainly. It is the governmental one (do as I force you, not as I do with your money).
- gpvos 4y agoThere used to be some good intercity trains from Brussels via Luxemburg to Strasbourg (Iris and Vauban), but they were cancelled in 2016 because of the TGV Est Paris-Strasbourg. It's a bit long for a bus ride really, especially when you'd want to work during the ride. Edit: oops, this is about Frankfurt-Strasbourg. (Sorry, I mixed it up with some other fairly recent reporting.) That's really hard to justify: there are high-speed trains doing that route in 1h50, and a non-stop one could do it even faster.
- axl7777 4y agoAir transport account for less than 4% of the 51 b tons of CO2 we send every year. These politicians aren’t going to make any difference. We could ask them to be role models, but with what finality? Again air transport is not the most urgent problem. I understand this is a topic that can be used to raise awareness, but the most useful thing these politicians could do is to rethink the way (EU) businesses are leading China and India to use coal for energy. Why no one proposes to handle this topic, I do not understand. And if someone would handle it, then it would be time to use your next vote wisely.
- melenaboija 4y agoThat is exactly my point. Then don’t try to convince me to separate my waste at home, because when you ask what is the true impact of it they say it is small but the sum of small efforts is what matters. Or is it that some are exempt of it?
- plandis 4y agoSome countries are starting to ban short haul flights. Seems a bit hypocritical to ban flights that would benefit your average citizens but then utilize the type of flight that’s convenient for politicians.
- lawl 4y ago> We could ask them to be role models, but with what finality? Yes! That would show everyone that dealing with climate change is going to reduce your quality of life. I'm sure that's a good idea.
- pfortuny 4y agoThey are "not going to make a difference" but we the people (I am a Spaniard) are paying for their jobs and they are constantly pressing us to use less polluting means of transportation. That is the shame. And the silly fact of the EU having: Brussels, Frankfurt, Luxembourg, Strasbourg as seats of the Government makes this shameful and, yes, scandalous.
- user_7832 4y agoMultiple locations makes sense politically. Different countries reduce the likelihood of anyone claiming favouritism (perhaps very slightly, but still) and makes it feel more democratic, even if it is more inefficient.
- reaperducer 4y agoAir transport account for less than 4% of the 51 b tons of CO2 we send every year. These politicians aren’t going to make any difference. As they say, no snowflake thinks it's responsible for the avalanche.
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- d0mine 4y agoAs I understand recycling at home is just a red-herring (it ends up somewhere in Turkey anyway and even if it didn't it is just a bucket in the ocean compared to the actual reasons for the climate change (natural resources industry). If we won't discount the consequences on the climate then nuclear energy becomes even more price competitive (real non snake-oil solution)).
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- bogomipz 4y agoIndeed. The political class increasingly have lost touch with just how regular people live. A regular person would be on the 4 hour train or the Flix bus. They seem to believe in lots of things mostly for "other" people though. It would be nice if they replaced these monthly sessions with Zoom meetings or similar. It's almost as if they are completely oblivious to corporate remote meetings revolution of the last 2+ years because of the pandemic. I have a mental image of one of these bureaucrats sitting in business class working a Powerpoint presentation about energy policy.
- trompetenaccoun 4y agoIt's not even a couple of hours, that's the best part. There are direct trains (ICE/TGV) that take around two hours, some even a bit less. The flight can't possibly be faster if you factor in getting to the airport and going through the security theater. Which, if we want to talk about beliefs is another ridiculous policy that hasn't demonstrably saved any lives. Instead now people simply get shot up in theaters and run over at Christmas markets. But thank god they're taking everyone's lighter and water bottle. I wonder if part of the reason they're flying is that they don't want to be in public transport with the plebeians.
- jollybean 4y agoIf there are direct trains there is simply no excuse. Frankly, wherever there are fast alternatives, I wonder if the days of airlines are numbered. Push through rail opportunities like maybe more runs with smaller trains, better synchronization of schedules, quick connections, faster trains etc..
- trompetenaccoun 4y agoSure, but just to add a bit to it there were multiple terror attacks on trains in Europe in recent years. In Germany there was this knife attack just a few months ago, as an example. You also run into some annoying folks on public transport from time to time even if they're not trying to kill you. In those pricey plane seats they're among themselves. This is the best explanation I can come up with why they're doing it, there isn't really any advantage flying this route. It's not true that people choose the most ecological mode of transport as long as speed is equal or faster, they often have other priorities.
- jen20 4y agoThe advantage is you can fly from wherever your constituency is in the EU to Frankfurt and then connect on to Strasbourg, and do the same on the way home.
- waqf 4y ago>In those pricey plane seats they're among themselves. Train travel also has multiple classes of service. And in some ways it's easier to keep people in their own half on a long train than on an A319 where they're only separated by a few feet and a curtain. So I guess I don't see your point here? Unless you're claiming that terrorists travel first class on trains but can't afford it on planes.
- rob_c 4y agoAll reasonable until we slide over the custom plane config with extra business class... I hope thats not a literal, we moved the seats for the aristocrats type of flight.
- United857 4y agoIn most European airlines short haul business class is just economy seats with the middle blocked off and slightly better food. This means they can dynamically adjust the size of business class on a per flight basis. So "a huge business class cabin" is misleading here.
- lukeschlather 4y agoYou're directly saying that business class seats on these flights take 150% more space than economy class. I think you're trying to argue that it's not actually as comfortable as business class, but the objectionable thing about business class is not that people are more comfortable, it's the wasted space. And the wasted space seems equivalent. I'm not looking for asceticism here, my hope is to minimize pollution. Of course, a bus would probably allow 200%-300% the space for less pollution and similar travel time.
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- t_mann 4y agoDon't blame Lufthansa, blame the EU institutions and the French government for creating this bizarre nomadism of EU parliamentarians.
- sendfoods 4y agoIt makes my blood boil to think these frequent flyer politicians are the same people demanding action against climate change.
- durnygbur 4y agoMy blood boils on receiving the bamboo or papper drink straw, which immediately soaks and becomes useless. Wonder if they use them on these flights that would surely help limiting the carbon footprint.
- midasuni 4y agoOur local cinema removed plastic straws before any ban came in, it was a market led thing thanks to public concern, politicians eventually followed what the market and public already demanded. Difficult to blame them. I have a bag of 1000 plastic straws, at current consumption that will last me about 200 years.
- unmole 4y ago> it was a market led thing It was a virtue signalling thing.
- IAmEveryone 4y agoHow often do you use straws? Maybe it's a cultural thing, but as far as I'm concerned, straws are for ages 1-10 and 75+.
- durnygbur 4y agoIt's climate change passive aggressiveness. You are provided with a tool which turns useless the moment you start using it. Oh, and nearby there is magazine with ranking of the most expensive yachts in the world, and of airlines by most comfortable first class.
- durnygbur 4y agoLufthansa will do everything to be profitable, except selling cheaper tickets and taking more passengers. Strategically they are the opposite of Ryanair.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoI didn't really understand the significance of this? Does it only make sense if you believe what the top commenter believes: “So when I see stories like this, it confirms that all this climate change nonsense is just that - nonsense. If it was really an issue, these flights wouldn't exist."
- smitty1e 4y agoThis is the modern equivalent of a Royal Road. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Road https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Road
- IAmEveryone 4y agoI guess it's a bit of a curiosity. The charge of hypocrisy is to be expected, and not entirely wrong, although it suffers from the usual problem, namely that a doctor telling you that smoking is dangerous with a pack of Marlboros on his desk isn't necessarily wrong.
- amalter 4y agoSo much better said then my rambling screed above. People pick up on any excuse to avoid the diagnosis. Yes, the switch to plastic straws was stupid. Yes, the rich and powerful fly on planes and own yachts. We live in this imperfect world. If we wait for it to become "perfect" top down, we'll just wait forever. And the climate emergency does to care about our partisan concerns. I feel so for those with children. It's clear we're leaving them a world already condemned.
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- chrisseaton 4y ago> Nearly two-thirds of the plane is business class Why is European business class so absolutely terrible?
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- Symbiote 4y agoIt's a 50 minute flight. Long flights have a better business class.
- chrisseaton 4y agoEven 50 min hops in the US have something better.
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- lostlogin 4y agoThis flight seems very slow. I’ve just compared it to some short haul flights locally - 1hr 10 mins gets me 650km. The flight in the article takes 55 minutes to go 178km. Short flights will have proportionally more time taxing etc, but this alone wouldn’t appear to explain it.
- netsharc 4y agoDid you compare to a local flight within the EU? Rules about on-timed-ness and passenger compensation for delays mean that airlines now add buffers to their flight times, so most of the times it's "Wahey, we're early!", when they do experience delays they end up landing at the advertised landing time, saving them from those compensation payments.
- lostlogin 4y ago> Did you compare to a local flight within the EU? No. Thanks for the explanation.
- netsharc 4y agoThen again, it's not just a EU thing: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/airlines-are-padding-flight-times-to-avoid-being-late https://www.cntraveler.com/story/airlines-are-padding-flight...
- lostlogin 4y agoI’m in New Zealander. Short flights (internal) are something you just rock up and get on to, and there is little messing about. They don’t even require ID.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y agoThis will be the block time; gate-to-gate. It's exactly the same time that United blocks for e.g. the LAX-SAN flight, which is actually ever so slightly shorter.
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- bogomipz 4y agoIt looks like there is a rail option between Brussels and Strasbourg which is just under 4 hours[1]. That's four hours where you can work the entire time. With the boarding, flight time and travel time to and from the airport what is the actual time savings here 1 hour? And if you could work the whole time on a train it sounds like a non-issue since this schedule seems to factor in two of the 4 days as travel days. Also why Frankfurt? I realize Frankfurt is an airhub but why would this be a convenient location? [1] https://www.rome2rio.com/map/Brussels/Strasbourg#r/Train/s/0 https://www.rome2rio.com/map/Brussels/Strasbourg#r/Train/s/0
- netsharc 4y agoThe EU should adopt this idea from Sweden from the 90's^W 80's, an office in a train carriage: https://youtu.be/3HbrI3refig https://youtu.be/3HbrI3refig (first 4.5 minutes)
- macinjosh 4y agoThese same people want to take away affordable heating from their constituents including the poor in the name of the "climate emergency". Yet, they can take a plane (that pumps huge amounts of CO2 directly into the sky) twice a week for the distance some people commute by ground _everyday_ for work. Then they only work for two days a week. I've never seen a more disgusting display of elitism.
- netsharc 4y agoAh, populist anger, populist anger everywhere. You don't even know who are taking these flights, just that they're offered by Lufthansa. But sure, in your mind they're "[the] same people".
- simongray 4y agoThey do not only work for two days a week, come on. The European Parliament is for nearly all intents and purposes located in Brussels, the Strasbourg one is considered more of a spinoff. I seriously doubt that the parliamentarians enjoy this unnecessary monthly commute, they would certainly prefer staying in Brussels the whole time.
- sofixa 4y agoI don't get the point of this flight. A train between the two will be around two hours, so an hour slower than the plane, but when you add travel to airports, it's probably faster, and the trains are more comfortable (and you can work from them).
- bobthepanda 4y agoFrankfurt is a major Lufthansa hub. There is a train station at Frankfurt Airport, but a plane connection would be airside, and for connections having to travel to city center possibly with bags is a minus. These days there is onboard wifi on most planes.
- mike_hock 4y agoWhat about the 10x worse carbon footprint per passenger mile? At 2 flights per month it's a drop in the bucket so who cares. But replacing the trains with flights would be extremely wasteful.
- bobthepanda 4y agoUltimately, it seems like the price of carbon is not high enough to offset an entire cabin of business class seats of €1K+ each. If you want the behavior to stop, increase the price of carbon. It’s all about the money in the end.
- dmurray 4y agoThe consumer in this case is the European Parliament. It's hard to think of anyone who would be less price-sensitive.
- jen20 4y agoI’ve seen many references to “business class” here as if it were something special and thus worthy of additional scrutiny. On Lufthansa short haul flights, business is economy with the middle seats blocked.
- unmole 4y ago> In many cases these are high ranking government officials, and presumably if this flight didn’t exist, they might travel on private jets, which would be even worse; in order words, these people probably wouldn’t otherwise take a bus Do MEPs really qualify as high ranking government officials?
- SirHound 4y agoYes?
- gunnarmorling 4y agoMembers of the parliament (legislative power) are not the government, which is the European Commission in this case (executive power).
- raverbashing 4y agoAnd by a comment on the page, the flight also takes not only MEPs but members of the EC as well
- jen20 4y agoOne assumes that since it has an LH flight number, anyone who wants to pay for it could book the flight.
- raverbashing 4y agoPossibly, but not necessarily (based only on the flight number). Fun fact, all flights (from commercial airlines) have a flight number, but those are not always sold. They might be charters or ferry/repositioning flights. (And while it might make sense to sell a repositioning flight - sometimes it's done on short notice or the airline doesn't want to assign cabin crew to those flights)
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- rbehrends 4y agoThe actual waste here is that while the European Parliament normally meets in Brussels, it is still bound by a 1992 decision to have a monthly session in Strasbourg [1]. This creates a huge and unnecessary overhead (shuttling 705 MEPs back and forth, maintaining separate offices in Strasbourg and other unnecessary duplication of efforts), of which this additional flight is just a small part. This could be fixed by deciding that the European Parliament meets in Brussels year-round. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_of_the_European_Parliament_in_Strasbourg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_of_the_European_Parliamen...
- AshamedCaptain 4y agoOr just keep adding more capitals into the rotation, until the overhead of any capital is negligible. I'm actually rather happy to have a moving capital / parliament seat. Would probably do with the fancy buildings and architecture, though.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> keep adding more capitals into the rotation, until the overhead of any capital is negligible In what world is maintaining multiple headquarters cheaper than one?
- hammock 4y agoThe more capitals you have, the less you need to proportionately increase your budget to add another one.
- jules-jules 4y agoThis guy bureaucrats.
- dmurray 4y agoThey do that for the European Council, but it's probably not feasible to do so for all seven EU "houses of Parliament".
- the_mitsuhiko 4y agoSo while this flight sounds a bit ridiculous it's not really. It takes of in Frankfurt and which is a big hub. You can buy a ticket VIE->FRA->SXB for 1000 EUR in Business class. It takes you three hours to get there. The cheapest ticket not involving a train in business class is 850 EUR so barely cheaper and takes 5.5 hours. As to why the plane does not take passengers on the return flight: it's a 30 minute flight and it's probably more efficient for the airline to send the plane in that configuration back to Frankfurt as there is no demand for a business class only flight on that day out of Strasbourg. A plane that does not fly is losing money.
- anamax 4y ago> You can buy a ticket VIE->FRA->SXB for 1000 EUR in Business class. There's your problem. Put them in economy. That adds 50% more seats to the flight AND saves money. Or rather, reimburse them for economy and let them decide whether they want to pay more.
- kurupt213 4y agoI don’t understand how airforce one got thrown out as another example of waste
- meinersbur 4y agoSome American Carriers have a lot shorter routes flying a lot more often [1]. Frankfurt <-> Strasbourg (220km) San Francisco <-> San Salito [2] (90km) The point of these are connections. If you are already at the airport, checked-in, luggage registered, you can just as well take the flight closer to your destination. Not saying the makes ecological sense, but I don't understand the outrage towards Lufthansa. Blame the MEP paying for these flights with your tax money and being bad role models contradicting the policies they are voting for. [1] https://thepointsguy.com/news/longest-shortest-united-flights/ https://thepointsguy.com/news/longest-shortest-united-flight... [2] https://www.businesstraveller.com/business-travel/2017/09/29/new-san-francisco-santa-rosa-flight-shortest-us/ https://www.businesstraveller.com/business-travel/2017/09/29...