Environment

Planes ‘fly empty’ to keep slots at Heathrow

by Paul Conneally | July 16, 2008 at 05:14 am

473 views | 5 Recommendations | 3 comments

The airlines tell us that they are concerned about the environment but they have to offer a service to their customers. Here we see bmi flying planes without passengers - very green.

Britain’s third-largest airline, bmi, will fly near-empty aircraft from this autumn to preserve multimillion-pound take-off and landing slots, The Times has learnt.

The rise in fuel prices and an expected slump in passenger numbers after the summer mean that many airlines will have to cancel flights, but bmi does not want to lose its coveted slots at Heathrow, which are valued at £770 million.

Airline executives are bracing themselves for their toughest winter yet as the credit crunch forces passengers to cut back on air travel and fuel prices continue to drive up costs.

The decision by bmi to fly “ghost flights” - short-haul trips with only a handful of passengers - is one of a series of plans being drawn up by airlines. Senior industry figures admit that other carriers will cancel domestic flights at short notice and gave warning of chaos ahead for business travellers. Rather than withdrawing from uneconomic routes, the tactic of cancelling individual flights is another way of retaining landing slots.

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Andrew Taylor

at 15:14 on July 17th, 2008

.... at about 7.30 am. Carbon trails everywhere. I was driving towards London, crawling actually in a slow traffic queue, and this was after Fleet about 30 miles South of Heathrow Airport.
(photographed through car window).

Andrew Taylor has contributed a photo to this story.

Uwe Paschen

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 05:56 on July 18th, 2008

LotusFlower, I like this story. It's good stuff.

On one hand we the customer want to notch services and every thing right now and right away, not ever willing to compromise. Yet on the other hand we point the finger at the provider of the top nosh service. Should the consumer be willing to wait in line, then we could talk environment policy that work! Alas I doubt that most consumers will allow that to happen, as long as others have to wait, that is okay, how ever not the we, our self!

Environmental sound planing and policy will demand a great effort on all Humans alike!

olly231163

at 04:37 on July 20th, 2008

This is Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, intended to be the global hub for British Airways. Although you cannot criticize Britain's largest airline, and one of the big three national carriers in Europe, for running ghost flights (in fact the flight taken by myself from London to Beijing was virtually full), many small to medium sized airlines such as bmi are feeling the pinch of the fuel crisis which has meant that one airline a week this year has gone bankrupt and has caused trouble for other airlines. Notable casualties this year include Silverjet, the business class only airline and Oasis, a Hong Kong based low cost carrier.

olly231163 has contributed a photo to this story.