An airline is under fire for flying an aircraft across the Atlantic with only five passengers..
The Boeing 777 used 22,000 gallons of fuel to take the five from Chicago to London.
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It's estimated each passenger was responsible for 43 tons of CO2 - enough to carry a Ford Mondeo around the world five times.
An American Airlines spokesman said: "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."
2 comments:
Well there ARE more than just passengers on flights: mail, packages, sometimes animals, diplomatic pouches, etc. Bet that flight had more than just people on it.
The big problem is the airlines are forced by the airport operators to fill every landing slot and every gate - they can even be fined or have their slots taken from them if they don't use them all.... so it's partly the rules they have to follow, too...
That's what you call a no win situation.
So then the airline is damned if it they did and damned if they don’t.
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