When In Doubt, Blame The Airlines For Your Travel Woes
by Andrew Posner, Providence, Rhode Island on 12.28.07
For a long time now the airline industry has benefitted from "a long-held notion about air travel delays — that bad weather and heavy air traffic cause the bulk of the waits that passengers endure." However, a recent USA Today analysis found that, contrary to conventional wisdom, airline glitches "such as pilot shortages, taking too long to refuel and mechanical breakdowns," are actually the leading cause of delays. These glitches have "triggered 23.8 million minutes of delays through October this year," compared to 23.3 million from "delays attributed to the congested air-traffic system."
All this means that the next time you find yourself in air travel purgatory, you can direct your obscenities at the almighty airline executives (rather than at the Almighty), and have a 50% chance of accurately assigning blame. But in all seriousness, this kind of inefficiency in the system equates to a lot of unnecessary emissions, as planes idle on the tarmac, spewing a cocktail of greenhouse gases and pollutants. So as with so many environmental issues, what's good for business is also good for customers and the planet, because better performance from the airlines would save time, money and fuel. Additionally, with rising fuel costs, and the EU preparing to regulate emissions, the airline industry is going to have to find ways to cut costs and emissions anyway. Sounds like a win-win-win to us.
Via: ::USA Today
See Also: ::Nature Air--The World's Only Zero Emission Airline?, ::Airline Industry's 'Risible' Attempt at Carbon Offsetting, ::EU On Collision Course With US Over Airline Carbon Cap Proposal, ::Building Green Airplanes: "This is Not Star Trek", ::Branson to Invest $3 Billion to Fight Global Warming, and ::EU Flags a Carbon Bank for Aircraft CO2 Emissions
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Neither of the links in the sentence-
"But in all seriousness, this kind of inefficiency in the system equates to a lot of unnecessary emissions, as planes idle on the tarmac, spewing a cocktail of greenhouse gases and pollutants."
make any sense in the context. The first is about Chinese coal mining, the second about planes LANDING, not idling.
As far as I know, planes do not idle, and certainly not at full strength, as this would lead to the plane taking off. Its simple physics. You can't disengage a gear like you could in a car. A jet engine is always trying to move a plane forward, if it is on and burning fuel.
I hate to nitpick, but idling jets on the tarmac are not going to be spewing much of anything compared to when they're flying.