https://www.wired.com/story/airplanes-empty-slots-covid/

If these airlines are flying what would be normal schedules if there were no pandemic then why the fuss?  You can't blame them for wanting to hold their gates.  If there were no pandemic and passengers were filling up these aircraft there would be no outcry over flying those hours.  Where am I wrong here?  Martin?  Chock?

Noel

Very interesting article , thanks for posting it .

2 hours ago, birdguy said:

If these airlines are flying what would be normal schedules if there were no pandemic then why the fuss? 

 

Because they don't have to be flying I guess.

If they have to fly (pre-pandemic) because passengers require transport fair enough, but why shove loads of CO2 into the atmosphere when we don't have to.

Part of the "limit CO2 emissions" philosophy  is to cut down where we can, when we can. That  means taking whatever opportunity arises to not shove carbon into the air. 

If they didn't fly during the pandemic, yes, its just a temporary reduction in flights, but lots of opportunities like this to make temporary reduction in CO2 emersions add up and there's bound to be always cuts that can be made this way across numerous human activates. 

27 minutes ago, martin-w said:

but why shove loads of CO2 into the atmosphere when we don't have to.

Apparently they have to fly if they want to keep their gates at the airports they fly to.  As I understand the article if the gates aren't used the airports can assign them to other airlines.  The airports should allow them to keep their gates during the pandemic even if they are not flying.  It's not the airlines fault.

There is also the factor of keeping pilots current.  If they are idle for a long period of time their skills decline.  I know when I was returned to flying after a long hiatus I had to go up with an instructor and make several takeoffs and landings and in-flight maneuvers such as stall recovery before he would signoff my log book that I was OK to fly.

Noel

 

16 hours ago, birdguy said:

Apparently they have to fly if they want to keep their gates at the airports they fly to.  As I understand the article if the gates aren't used the airports can assign them to other airlines.  The airports should allow them to keep their gates during the pandemic even if they are not flying.

 

Yep, I agree.

I guess the airports feel they are losing money if they don't reassign an unused gate. A difficult situation and I can see the issue on both sides. 

Maybe we have to accept that one of the negatives of the pandemic (among many) is either a slight increase in CO2 emissions, or a loss of revenue for airports. And its governments job to decide which and provide the necessarily legislation perhaps. 

Edited February 6, 20224 yr by martin-w

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

a slight increase in CO2 emissions

Actually, it would be a slight decrease over normal operations flying with a full passenger load. 🙂 

I think that was the point that Noel-the-birdman was trying to make.

The airlines are losing a LOT of money by flying empty.  The upside is that it might be easier to get upgraded to first class. 😄 

Hook

57 minutes ago, LHookins said:

Actually, it would be a slight decrease over normal operations flying with a full passenger load. 🙂 

I think that was the point that Noel-the-birdman was trying to make.

 

Well yes, but there is zero demand for passengers, thus its an increase in CO2 compared to what it should be with zero passenger demand for those flights. An opportunity to reduce CO2 missed. That missed opportunity to save CO2 may be the price we pay for being in a pandemic, along with the other negatives. Or, the alternative, is to allow the airports to lose some revenue. 

I know what Noel meant. 

What would be your choice? Reduce the CO2 or allow airports to make a loss on those unused gates? Tricky question. 

 

I think we all know that high finance will trump environment 99% of the time unless there is a public groundswell for the environment.  We who inhabit this forum are all aviation minded.  But what about those who aren't like the rest of my family and 99% of my friends and neighbors.  

The answer to this problem is to demonstrate and picket the airports to preserve the pre-pandemic gate assignments in place until it is over.

But realize that some empty flights must continue for the purpose of maintaining pilot proficiency.

Noel

On the face of it, simply saying airlines can keep their route slots without actually flying them seems like an easy solution, but unfortunately it isn't quite as simple as that, because this would severely impact the entire infrastructure which surrounds and supports these operations, which is very fragile and on really tight margins. Many of the companies which operate these support services are in fact on such a tight margin that if they no longer had to service loads of sparsely populated flights, they'd be paying their staff to sit there doing nothing whilst not earning revenue from servicing those flights, which they could not afford to do, so they'd go out of business. What then happens in this scenario, is the staff they lose go find jobs in other industries, which means if and when things later pick up in the airline business, there'd be a massive skills gap. We already see this exact thing occurring at EGCC where I work (and it is even worse at some other UK airports), where the furlough scheme from the 2020 lockdown has caused exactly this problem, with service agents unable to attract staff back to aviation after the lockdown finished, and even when they do manage to get people back, everyone has to be trained and certified on stuff again, which costs even more money. As a result, the few of us who are mad enough to have gone back after the pandemic to do this job, are run ragged. I'm averaging a 60 hour week and rarely get time for a break when I'm in work either, which in case anyone is curious, is why I went AWOL for a while and why I've not been doing youtube reviews recently.

At the heart of this problem, is the extremely cheap airfares which people have unrealistically come to expect. This impacts on how much a service agent can bid for a contract, which then affects the wages they can afford to pay and the numbers of staff they can employ even if they were able to attract people to the roles. This means everyone who was working on aeroplanes prior to the pandemic, went and found jobs in other industries and found it was much easier work.

So now they all think: 'Why should I freeze my @ss off or get soaking wet working on aeroplanes all day long in all weathers, when I can get the same wage working in a nice warm supermarket or office, where I don't have to do a ton of exams and certifications all the time to be able to do the job, don't have anywhere near as much responsibility, don't have to jump through security hoops every day, and the worst that can happen is I spill some food on aisle three of the supermarket or get some tedious marketing report to my boss a day later than promised, as opposed to chancing walking into a jet engine or making a mistake when loading an aeroplane and endangering that aeroplane its crew and its passengers, not to mention everyone it flies over, for which I'd go to jail?'

What really needs to be done to solve this, is for people to realise that loss leader offers from airlines such as Ryanair and the like are exactly that, and it isn't actually genuinely viable to fly a 737 NG 2,000 miles whilst charging everyone twenty quid for a ticket on the thing. This way service agents which bid for the contracts to spin those holiday jets on their turnarounds would actually be able to pay a wage commensurate with the level of responsibility the job, and people would actually want to do it for one thing, but the better margins would also mean service agents would actually be able to stay in business without the need for those ghost flights.

It's the same for the airports too; they make money off fueling, ramp fees, FEP usage, de-icing, landing and take off fees and so on. So ultimately it comes down to money, which means expecting Joe Blow to pay a reasonable amount for his airline ticket instead of paying buttons for it based on the fact that everyone who makes that plane fly, from the pilots to the bloke on security at the airport entrance, is on utterly garbage wages for what they do.

But guess what? Joe Blow likes his cheap flights more than he likes saving the environment, so he'll complain about how terrible it is that the environment is suffering from those ghost flights and say how bloody marvellous he thinks Greta Thunberg is, but he won't want to spend the money to create the solution to what she is on about. And he doesn't care that the people servicing and piloting his aeroplane are not on great money, which he should do really, because its mostly the good will of the people who want to work in aviation and who care about it, which keeps his plane safe, because it certainly isn't the money that makes them do it, because I literally made four times as much money when training movie special effects for a living, than I do working for a service agent. The critical difference is, when I was training people on special effects, I could show them how to CGI an exploding airliner, whereas now if I do a sloppy job, it'll result in the real thing.

Edited February 6, 20224 yr by Chock

You certainly laid it out Chock.

How many people fly only because the fares are cheap?  How much would passenger traffic decline if fares were raised to a level to give everyone involved a decent living wage?  

Noel

 

As Chock and others have said, money in this industry is hard to come buy for EVERYTHING at airports these days,and even attracting people into jobs that are available is hard.

Where i work, the airport authorities have a large amount of vacancies unfilled, mostly i'm guessing for the reasons Chock stated.

As for the reasigning of gates etc don't feel too sorry for the airports as a lot of the time the're more interested in getting passengers using the shops than the aircraft on the gates

Often i feel that i work at a shopping centre not an airport.

Enough with the environmental impact diatribe. This was hashed out previously and has no place in this discussion.