A discussion about sustainable air travel. (Ideas Welcome!!)

[Zachstar]

Hello everyone!

After posting the news topic http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x157723 I started to wonder about the current air travel industry.

Right now as you likely know. The industry is a mess. Companies looked upon as titans of business that dealt with keeping huge fleets of aircraft in the air are well into the red or bankrupt. Even before oil prices started to skyrocket the airlines were in serious trouble. Their boards making terrible business decisions and aircraft makers slow to respond to new markets. Then 9/11 hit and suddenly the game of .gov bailouts of Air travel started. And yet despite the relief they did little and when the oil price started to skyrocket they are left telling the people they have to merge and add surcharges out the rear end to survive. To a point where even Frequent Fliers are getting hit with more surcharges.

So the airlines are now in a death spiral. Too many aircraft flying with fewer passengers leading to higher ticket and surcharges meaning LESS people fly meaning less profit per flight and it goes on and on.

Mergers are not going to save it. Period.

Airlines outside the US are quickly trying to adapt without crying to the .gov. The A380 is one of the best examples of an aircraft designed to actually make a profit on large routes. Yet even it is too little too late.

In my view what is killing the industry is regional flights. Where often airports just operate a few flights and oftentimes the aircraft are not even 1/3rd full. People hop on these polluting flights like it is nothing. Then get hopped over to a big airport with a flight to Paris. It is insanity.

So in my view we got two choices. Both having to do with that EEstor battery mentioned in the last topic.

#1 (Less likely) We have to stop accepting these jet regional jets and go EV. Now EV is not something that works very well with aircraft because you need a big battery to push alot of air around with a electric motor. However A regional aircraft can do that easier because a sub 100 seat craft has plenty of room for a bank of EEstor batteries that is perfect for the City A to Dallas flight. However, This means that due to cost that aircraft will have to be converted and that is going to be one heck of a project.

#2 Get rid of regional flights. If people can drive 300 miles on a single charge then there will be areas to quickly charge all over the place (What on earth do you think Gas stations will be doing? Obviously they will replace the gas tanks with a bank of batteries for quick charging customers for a few dollars a charge or whatever) This is a Darwin effect because when people realize they don't have to pay out the rear end to use a regional flight. They will drive (Which today is a luxary due to extreme fuel prices) And driving a car on EV is much quieter and calmer than an engine.

Now about the international flights that take tons of fuel obviously can't go EV. But they are not killing the Industry. And massive EV adoption will make fuel cheaper. And if Solar production continues to grow then it may be possible to partially replace their normal supply with Algae fuel from Bioreactors.

To Conclude the simple fact is we have to have air travel. As so many businesses rely on the ability to quickly get to Paris or New York or Tokyo. Yet at the way things are going now the people who can afford to get a plane ticket in the future will really feel their wallets empty as they pay a single company willing to charge what it has to charge.

Your ideas?

[TheWraith]

1. So what is a "regional" flight?

Last time I flew, I went Buffalo to Atlanta to Las Vegas on the outbound trip, and LV to Cincinatti to Buffalo on the return. Only the last of those four flights was on a relatively small plane. Should I have driven to New York City to hop a bigger, direct flight? That's a full day of driving time on top of the existing hassle of a flight. Eliminating regional jumps would vastly increase the difficulty and frustration for anyone who doesn't live in major urban center.

The way I see it, the path to balanced air traffic is simple: stop subsidizing it. The airlines need to rebuild their network to make it more efficent, and they need to find a way to sink or swim without government help. Let's give them the incentive to work it out by putting them off the dole.

As far as "sustainability," I should also note that jet fuel is basically high performance kerosene, which can be refined from nearly any oil source, including animal and vegetable oils. That said, refining algal oil using solar power sounds rather like a bad joke.

[Zachstar]

5. 717,727, earlier 737 models, MD class so on and so forth..

They fly into airports where they load with a few people with sometimes red line costs. Because they want to maintain that route and fly to some major airport where you board a 737-800 747 757 767 777 Large airbus or whatever and fly to New York.

[Occam Bandage]

12. The DC-9s and MDs are going away on their own; they're too inefficient.

727s are already relegated to FedEx/UPS/DHL and a few other cargo companies. I can't think of any airlines that fly them. 717s are only flown by Midwest and ATA, but are a fairly cost-effective plane.

[XemaSab]

2. About regional flights:

It takes me 10 hours to get from Redding to Santa Barbara by car, but it's about 3 hours by plane (with an hour layover in San Francisco).

It's about a 3 hour drive to Sacramento from Redding, and a 3 hour drive to Santa Barbara from LA, plus the airport security BS and the actual plane ride, so it would be about 10 hours if I drove to a bigger airport and flew to another big airport. Compound that with the fact that I'd have to rent a car in LA and drive to SB instead of having a friend in SB pick me up, and you can see the magnitude of the hassle.

Maybe I'm way off here, but I think regional airports are a vital part of the American transportation network.

[losthills]

3. The view fro "Freeperville...."

:spray:

[Zachstar]

4. What are you talking about?

[NickB79]

6. Zeppelins

When it absolutely, positively must be there sometime in the next month :-)

[AndyTiedye]

7. Use Rail for the Short Hops

Rail is the most efficient way to handle short hops.
There are fewer of the short hops in Europe because trains handle most of those.
We need to do it that way.

[On the Road]

9. That is True

but only if it's a heavily travelled route between specific points.

[wtmusic]

8. The EEstor "battery" doesn't exist

and there is plenty of skepticism in regard to their claims.

Commercial aviation running on stored electricity is not practical and will not be for a long time to come. Too long to do anything about the current mess.

[On the Road]

10. Air Travel is Completely Dependent on Petroleum

and will probably remain so unless replaced by a similar biofuel.

The good news is that as long as power generation and auto travel adapt to other other sources, it probably won't have to. Overall, aviation fuel does not account for a high percentage of oil consumption, and there should be enough for a long time if other demand drops.

[Occam Bandage]

11. ...and you really think that removing Detroit-Chicago flights will

be received favorably? Minneapolis-Chicago? Pittsburgh-Chicago? Philadephia-New York? New York-DC? New York-Chicago?

Those flights are just as necessary--if not more so--to the national business infrastructure as New York-Paris flights are. Perhaps as fuel costs increase, airlines will consolidate CRJ flights into 737 flights, but I can't really see it going any further.

[Terry in Austin]

13. We have to have air travel?

Sorry, can't accept the premise.

Here's a premise that would be just as valid: aviation was basically a twentieth-century stunt that got way out of hand when it was institutionalized as mass transportation, thanks to an immense windfall of fossil energy. YMMV.

But the energy orgy is winding down, and the airlines are ripe to be an early casualty as this exceptional period draws to a close.

This is also a question of values: three generations of industrial-scale indulgence seems to have fogged our ability to distinguish between "needs" and "gosh, that would be keen to have." Please, we need to look further ahead than whether a businessman can get to Paris as quickly as he's become accustomed to.

Your enthusiasm is great, and we'll need a lot of it in order to keep on with thinking about this stuff. Technology is something we do, after all, and we'll keep on doing it in some form or another.

When we get a new hammer, though, we need to make sure just what the nails are. Technology is wonderful and all, but we can't expect it to save us from our own folly.