From
The GuardianLook at Karlsson in the quote (a snippet from an article) above. He shouldn't have to be working 16 hour days to help people - it should be a natural part of the systems provided that people can help themselves!
If he's that busy, and if he doesn't think this is a flash in the pan, why doesn't he take on a bit of help?
THe first thing that needs to happen is for flight prices to become more realistic - but this is not saying that rail is realically priced either. Just that flights are more unrealistic (in cheapness) than rail is unrealistic (un expensiveness).
Aircraft fuel for flights that are deemed unenvironmental in terms of distance, for example needs taxing properly - i.e. VAT▸ added for a start. That would add circa 20% to the cost (an argument exists though to add VAT to all furl, like vehicle fuel)
*then* look for other ways to persuade folk that domestic flights (except maybe the south to north, beyond Edinburgh/Glasgow axis) are so unenviromentaly friendly that there are better, more environmentally friendly ways of getting there)
Flight prices are not unrealistic, just clever. The best deals happen when the timetables are first published and to get rid of any empty seats just before the flight. The £40 I paid for a return to Naples would have been double later the same day, and over £200 the day before the flight. Then consider adding VAT to fuel - airlines would start flying to Britain with a lot more fuel than they need for the flight (unless at the limit of range) which burns more fuel. Another way would be to make a short flight to somewhere with cheaper, untaxed, fuel then fill up there. That uses more fuel too, as take-off and climb are the thirsty bits of a flight, but the fuel capacity of the longer range aircraft, such as teh A330-900, is over 100 tonnes, getting on for half the weight of the aircraft.
Jet fuel currently costs around 64p per litre in tax-free Guernsey according to
Aiglle the supplier,, and has a specific gravity of 0.8. The VAT at 20% on 80% of the tank capacity of an A330-900 would be around £13,000, which is probably worth a pit-stop in Ireland / Holland / Iceland to avoid. Worse news for the chancellor is that if the flight were actually counted as two flights, one from the
UK▸ and a new one from the refuelling stop, passengers would possibly only pay the lower rate of air passenger duty, applicable to flights of under 2,000 miles, subject to a bit of creative thinking by the airline. Split ticketing can work on planes too! At a difference of £65 per standard class passenger, the cost of taxing flying could lead to a diminishing return for the Treasury and the burning of more fuel overall.
Air travel is virtually 100% fossil fuel reliant, and aircraft are already reasonably fuel efficient. Significant reductions in aviation fuel use will therefore only come from flying less.
Stupid question .... what about Biojet fuel? - see
((here))Biojet fuel is made from vegetable oils, sugars, animal fats and even waste biomass, and can be used in existing aviation jet engines without modification.
Jatropha oil is suitable for conversion to jet fuel. This biojet fuel has received wide acceptance from the airline industry.
Still not CO2 friendly, but not using fossil resources?
Not a stupid question, in fact not even slightly silly. If there was some way of transforming something absolutely useless into jet fuel, or any other fuel for that matter, I would back it all the way. We have biofuels from anaerobic digesters providing methane for the national gas grid (and, if you believe the hype, MetroBust), turning, in the case of my area, farm slurry and vegetable waste into fuel, with a nutrient that can be spread on the fields without the usual pong of the muckspreader or release of huge amounts of ammonia gas into the atmosphere. Everybody wins. The problem comes when you add a financial incentive, usually in the form of subsidies. Then, you start to find crops being grown purely to feed the digester, and I have heard reports already of tractors hauling trailers of low-grade maize from the outskirts of Bristol to Devon to generate
subsidies environmentally friendly energy. We risk disturbing the delicate balance of agriculture, and seeing vast areas currently used for food being turned over to fuel.
It gets worse. Jatropha oil, as reported by grahame, can be used in jet engines without any further treatment. For those unfamiliar with the plant, it grows in the tropics and sub-tropics, grows 2 metres high, and the seeds can contain 40% oil. If that sounds wonderful as the future, then consider the massive damage already done in some sensitive regions to produce palm oil alone. Seeing rain forests levelled to make jet fuel isn't going to help at all.
Aircraft are a lot more efficient than they were even a very short time ago. Engine technology took a big jump with the development of the high bypass engine from its modest beginnings. The fuel crisis of the 1970s focussed minds towards cutting fuel consumption, and that continues today. Modern aircraft are a lot lighter than their ancestors, the engines are much more efficient, design has improved markedly, and computers squeeze more performance from the engines than aircrew ever could. Billions of barrels of jet fuel are still used annually, though, so improvement has to continue.
I'm not really helping much. I suppose I could get to the Canaries within 3 or 4 days by train and the ferry from Cadiz, at a cost of over £1,000, but I'm opting for 4 hours in an Airbus A321NEO.
Click on the map to explore geographics
