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addaon 1 days ago [-]
This feels like one of those cases where it’s safe to say “history” instead of “recorded history.”
rob74 1 days ago [-]
History, as recorded by Flightradar24: "a whopping grand total of 153,359 commercial flights were tracked between 00:00 UTC and 23:59 UTC on July 23, 2026" So I would say it's justified to qualify it. Not sure how Flightradar24's coverage has evolved over time, but it could theoretically be that there were more flights at some point before 2020, but some of them weren't tracked?
bluefirebrand 15 hours ago [-]
I think the parents point was that before recorded history we can be pretty sure there weren't airplanes for anyone to take flights on
epolanski 17 hours ago [-]
Minor commercial flights at minor airports? The kind of 20 people flight between two cities in Indonesia not even Indonesians know much?
FireBeyond 11 hours ago [-]
One would generally think that even those had ADS-B running.
rob74 7 hours ago [-]
Sure, most commercial aircraft were probably broadcasting their position etc. via ADS-B, the question was just if they were picked up by a Flightradar24 receiver. Also, I'm not sure what the threshold is for Flightradar24 to consider a flight "tracked" - probably at least the takeoff and landing? So (to use the same example) if there was a receiver near the larger city in Indonesia where the flight originated, but not near the remote airstrip where it landed, it probably isn't considered tracked?
amelius 1 days ago [-]
Even history is not safe if you consider the entire universe.
dudefeliciano 1 days ago [-]
Technically history only refers to the parts of the past for which we have written records.
reaperducer 16 hours ago [-]
Paleontologists would like to have a word…
casper14 16 hours ago [-]
No the study of history started at written records. It's call pre-historical for a reason
dudefeliciano 10 hours ago [-]
Paleontology != History
sandworm101 1 days ago [-]
I dont think they are refering to that. I think it is a reference to all the non-recorded flights happening every day. Maybe there was a day last week with more flying, but it wasnt all recorded.
leaves83829 19 hours ago [-]
i don't understand how we can be setting new records on airflights at a time when there is a major oil crisis unfolding. oil isn't at 200$/barrel yet but you'd think even at 100$/barrel the price signals would cause at least some demand destruction.
and wasn't there talk in europe of jet fuel shortages. and governments everywhere are supposed to run out of emergency oil supplies in the next 1 to 6 months?
i'm a bit confused.
caycep 17 hours ago [-]
The need for transportation grows but the margin is likely terrible bc of the fuel prices. Hence why you can have "the most flights etc etc" but Spirit and other airlines are going under
epolanski 17 hours ago [-]
If a price of a ticket goes up 10/20/50 euros it's not gonna deter me a bit if I have to fly.
Most people fly because they have to, family gatherings, planned vacations, business trips.
The number of people genuinely deterred by a small amount in price is still going to be small.
Also, inflation adjusted, fuel isn't that expensive. 80/90$ a barrel are prices we've seen already decades ago.
HDBaseT 16 hours ago [-]
More people, more flights.
profeaturr 17 hours ago [-]
The narrative that the online news-driven world tends toward is more a result of ideology and wishful thinking than reality. Hence the term “fake news.”
bestouff 1 days ago [-]
Yes let's continue burning fuel. It's fine.
K0nserv 1 days ago [-]
Flying is a bit unique in that there aren't really viable alternatives. It also accounts for a fairly small portion of emissions. Land transport (cars and trucks), power generation, and heating are where the big wins exist with viable alternatives.
bluebarbet 20 hours ago [-]
Per person, it is reliably the single most polluting thing you will do. The reason it accounts for a "small proportion" of emissions is that most people in the world do not fly at all. Indeed, a tiny (<1% IIRC) elite of the world's population account for most of the world's flight kilometers. Flying is an absolutely unscalable form of transport in a world of 8 billion people.
tmnvix 19 hours ago [-]
> Flying is an absolutely unscalable form of transport in a world of 8 billion people.
So is the private (ICE) motorcar. ~4000kg of CO2/y for typical US use.
tonyedgecombe 1 days ago [-]
It only represents a small portion of emissions because so few people fly. For the people that do fly it represents a large portion of their emissions.
It’s also the activity least likely to be decarbonised.
Of course there are alternatives, I haven’t flown on a plane since 2001.
Levitating 3 hours ago [-]
In Europe you can take the train. Although for whatever reason it's priced similarly to airplane tickets but obviously has far longer travel times.
A lot if not most airplane traffic is holiday related, and only a handful of rich people actually get to enjoy it. There's no need for it.
Levitating 3 hours ago [-]
In Europe you can take the train. Although
A lot of
1 days ago [-]
dudefeliciano 1 days ago [-]
I think if high speed rail was a viable option in the US and Europe those numbers would look a lot different.
bergie 21 hours ago [-]
In Europe flying is subsidised and ridiculously cheap. That would need to end.
Further than removing subsidies, if flight cost would include its negative externalities, few would fly.
megablast 1 days ago [-]
What?? In Europe there are lots of viable alternatives. Same as Asia!!
jjice 1 days ago [-]
For transport you're right. I think the parent your referring to was specifically saying there's no alternative way to power a plane. That's my assumption at least.
K0nserv 1 days ago [-]
I was saying a bit of both. megablast is correct that there are alternatives, but I'd maybe quibble with "viable". For example you can get from Stockholm to Umeå with a 1 hour flight or a 6-8 hour train journey, is the train a viable alternative? For aviation there aren't alternative fuels and on many journeys even the alternative transport options aren't in the same ballpark.
sdoering 1 days ago [-]
Calling it a “1 hour flight” is a bit misleading when comparing transport options. The relevant number is door-to-door travel time.
Once you include getting out of Stockholm to the airport, security, boarding, the flight itself, possible baggage collection, and the trip into Umeå, I would be surprised if the total were much below 4 hours. Comparable German domestic flights such as Hamburg–Munich usually took me around 4–4.5 hours in practice in the past when traveling for work before the pandemic.
That makes the train a 6–8 hour alternative to a roughly 4-hour flight journey. Whether that is viable depends on the traveller, but it is certainly more competitive than “1 hour versus 8 hours” suggests.
I admit that for me, living about an hour north of the Hamburg main station but only 15 minutes from the airport, the plance for a business trip in Munich can still be a viable (albeit seldom taken) option. More often than not, if time permits, I take the train, work on the train. But as said - there still are situations, that make flying such a distance viable (to me).
I just wanted to point out, that it is not as clear cut as 1 hour vs. 6 to 8 hours.
VBprogrammer 1 days ago [-]
In the UK I could get from Central London to Central Glasgow in 4.5 hours on the train. The same trip on a flight, it takes an hour to get the airport (assuming it's not one of the budget airlines pretending Essex or Bedfordshire is London...), I need to be there 2 hours before (maybe less is you are brave and Security isn't messed up) the flight takes an hour and then I have to get out of the airport and find my way from Paisley back to Glasgow Central.
Of course there are a lot of variables, if instead I leave from my house the aircraft would actually be faster, mostly due to the extra time it takes to get to Central London and from Waterloo to Euston.
In reality we usually drive in about 6-8 hours because, as a family of 4 traveling, it's considerably cheaper even before you take into account having transport on the other end.
Findecanor 1 days ago [-]
I'd say that 4-6 hours is often the cut-off point for total travel time city-to-city -- provided that the train is fast.
I and a friend once started at Stockholm Central station to Malmö Central Station at the same time. I boarded a bullet train; he took the bus to the airport ...
We arrived at the same time six hours later.
I've been looking at travel in Japan recently. Between Hiroshima and Tokyo, the bullet train (fast Shinkansen) and flight are both about four hours.
A bullet train is much more comfortable than flight within these limits because there are so fewer steps: no travel to/from airport, fewer tickets to book and often no check-in or security checkpoint.
K0nserv 1 days ago [-]
Yeah fair, having experienced Japanese trains I fully agree about the comfort. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't build high speed rail and try to shift more travel to trains instead of aviation either to be clear. I love trains and I especially love Shinkansen style trains, but aviation still has a big edge in big parts of the world and on some journey lengths.
RankingMember 1 days ago [-]
I'd like to see an attempt at modern air cruises on giant zeppelins.
lbriner 1 days ago [-]
Then the plane takes longer than the train!
phoghed 1 days ago [-]
A price I’m more than willing to pay to for my Final Fantasy IX airship
RankingMember 1 days ago [-]
Exactly what I had in mind
RankingMember 1 days ago [-]
Yeah this would be more making the airship part of the experience rather than a means to an end.
rienbdj 7 hours ago [-]
Flying is usually the cheapest and quickest option. Madness!
bluGill 1 days ago [-]
For short trips. Most plane trips are at a distance where there isn't a viable alternative. Sure there are some nice trains that can handle the more common trips, but airplanes really shine for much longer trips.
rickydroll 1 days ago [-]
And planes go to more places than trains do. You want to add a new destination? Go through a few years of planning and construction for a couple thousand feet of tarmac, and people can go there using existing planes. Best of all, you don't need a large passenger base to justify the expense.
For rail? You're looking at an order of magnitude more for planning and construction, all new infrastructure, all new rail stock. It will take a much larger passenger base to justify the expense and effort.
Airplanes don't just shine for longer trips. There have been some interesting developments with commuter airplanes that are either all electric or hybrid with a 200-plus-mile range. If they are as energy efficient as they promise to be, we could see a resurgence in municipal airports for transportation between regional centers where rail is either unavailable or excessively expensive.
dredmorbius 12 hours ago [-]
OTOH, there's a lot of stuff that is far more feasibly moved on the Earth's surface rather than in flight. So some sort of surface-level infrastructure will be required: highways, railroads, canals, rivers, oceans.
Some of those are amenable to high-speed variants, some less so. And once you've established transport corridors, much of the hard part (rights-of-way acquisition) is accomplished, so that adding a high-speed route becomes far more tractable.
For the most part, actual construction costs are fairly modest, modulo bridges and tunnels, both of which can of course be quite expensive.
rickydroll 9 hours ago [-]
Good points. I think that running rail parallel to highways, especially if the rail can travel twice to three times as fast as road traffic, is a good plan.
I think increasing the viability of travel between smaller airports is a good thing for those times when you don't want to spend a lot of time traveling or waiting for a transit vehicle. If the equivalent of micromobility air travel comes to fruition, you'll see two- or three-person vehicles that get up and go when someone wants a ride. Another benefit could be the airport-to-airport delivery of packages with different-sized drone craft and autonomous navigation.
#IFoundMyFlyingCar
bluGill 4 hours ago [-]
Flying still require an airport which means you need a fair amount of distance. Sure some make short flights today but they have made their life center around flying those short flights they can't accept houses or joins that are not close to an airport. Most wouldn't accept that compromise in their life.
FredFS456 1 days ago [-]
Depends on where you're flying to and from in Asia, and how far.
jryle70 18 hours ago [-]
if people prefer flying even if alternatives exist, like what's going on in Europe and Asia, then the alternatives aren't good enough -- price, convenience, availability, comfort, whatever reasons.
ImJamal 16 hours ago [-]
Even if some high speed rail existed in the US, do you think it is practical to go from California to Maine? If you are going 2,500 miles on a train that is going 150 miles an hour it would take you 16 hours assuming there are no stops. Obviously there are going to be stops so your trip is going to be an entire day.
I think a lot of people do not understand just how massive the US is.
elzbardico 16 hours ago [-]
California to Maine is a lot of distance. But would people fly from NYC to Boston if they had a bullet train?
ImJamal 14 hours ago [-]
The person I was responding to was saying that Europe and Asia have alternatives so it is wrong to say that flying has no viable alternatives. I was pointing out that some routes in the US are just not viable.
Sure some routes could have viable alternatives, but others just do not.
chneu 1 days ago [-]
There are plenty of alternatives. Most importantly: traveling locally. Nobody needs to visit 30 countries by 30 years old or whatever dumb social media excuses they have.
Air travel is a very recent modern invention(1960s, at least for everyday folk) and people act like flying around the world is a right.
Modern capitalism is an excess machine and it'll feed us constant excuses for why our reasons are valid. Air travel is a great example. Travel and tourism are seen as "musts" by people nowadays. It's insane how destructive and unnecessary it is. It's wild how entitled everyone is nowadays. I'll happily take down votes for calling out the insane excess that we have nowadays. We're killing ourselves one funco pop at a time and we all deserve that funco pop according to the latest excuse(won't someone blame the rich!!!)
K0nserv 1 days ago [-]
Even if you are correct, in practice there's no way to put this particularly genie back in the bottle. It's the same as trying to argue that we should solve our energy problems by asking people to consume less energy. Outside of some climate dictatorship, it's not happening.
Also, on travel, I think there's a lot to be said for the value of travel and being exposed to other cultures and societies. "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness[..]" and all that.
Tarsul 22 hours ago [-]
I believe climate dictatorship will come already this century if our decarbonisation efforts stay as weak as they are. It won't be under that name though. One sufficient policy would be to price everything in money + co2 equivalent currency. Every person in a country gets a certain co2 currency budget per year. Pretty simple actually (yeah yeah, the small print will still be long but the gist is simple).
K0nserv 5 hours ago [-]
> One sufficient policy would be to price everything in money + co2 equivalent currency. Every person in a country gets a certain co2 currency budget per year. Pretty simple actually (yeah yeah, the small print will still be long but the gist is simple).
Just having a carbon tax, that accurately prices the cost of carbon, is enough. It's one of the few taxes that has broad support among economists. However in a democracy like the US I don't see how it ever gets implemented and even if it does, it will get ripped up 2-4 years later.
I could easily be convinced that dictatorships make a big comeback this century, however I find it unlikely that they will have a good carbon policy.
melling 1 days ago [-]
It’s 2.5-3% of all global emissions.
People who complain about aviation do more harm than good.
We would accomplish more by closing a few coal power plants and replacing them with renewables or nuclear. And no one would even notice.
Can you believe it’s almost 2030 and we still haven’t reached peak coal.
greggoB 19 hours ago [-]
> People who complain about aviation do more harm than good.
I find this a bit hard to swallow. It speaks to a sense of impunity wrt emissions for a demographic that very arguably drives much of the rest of the way energy is consumed. It is one of many choice this demographic has the privelage of making, in contrast to much of the rest of the population.
Have you ever met a coal or oil exec who was shy about flying? If anything, the latter would no doubt lobby hard against efforts to reign in flights, as it's directly tied to the interests of their industry.
melling 19 hours ago [-]
Who cares. Fix the big problems first. The general public is already complaining about subsidizing EVs, renewables, etc.
It’s ridiculous the amount of fossil fuels we still burn for electricity.
This “shame, shame” garbage that people did never worked.
greggoB 17 hours ago [-]
Hard to tell what you're specifically bothered by - is it a focus on emissions that aren't specifically fossil fuels burned for electricity, or "shame, shame garbage", as you put it?
In either case, I think we can be expected to walk and chew gum; to see every source of emissions as its own individual problem (scaled to proportion, ofc) AND recognize that they inevitably feed into each other. To do less is counterproductive, IMO.
iso1631 5 hours ago [-]
> subsidizing renewables
Except this isn't happening. Oil is subsidised (and not just by the constant action for the last 50 years to keep oil flowing from the middle east), and has been for decades. Even coal is subsidised in the US
Renewables are increasingly banned in the US.
I agree the nonsense about the tree botherers saying "we need to be vegetarian and use no more than 1kWh a day of energy" are twats that do more harm than good, but the US specifically has an agenda against renewable energy, presumably because it's not the subscription model that the US loves. You buy your solar panel and it works for decades. You buy a gallon of gas and you're back the next day to buy it again.
iso1631 5 hours ago [-]
The people driving it tend not to be flying 300 miles on a public 767, even at the front.
The total average across the industry in 2018 was between 67 and 81 mpg. Modern planes are in the 100-120mpg range.
elil17 1 days ago [-]
The issue is that we are enabling people to travel long distances too cheaply.
bluebarbet 20 hours ago [-]
And above all too quickly. Per kilometer, flying is roughly as polluting as driving, but nobody would think to drive across a continent to go to the beach.
brainwad 4 hours ago [-]
Yes they would. That's why we get massive queues for alpine crossings during European holidays – German and Dutch tourists trying to get to the beaches in Italy.
dudefeliciano 1 days ago [-]
What about short distances? Why is it cheaper to fly Berlin-Stuttgart than to take a train? it makes absoutely no sense.
elil17 4 hours ago [-]
The costs are pretty evenly split between:
1) Maintaining track
2) Buying/leasing/maintaining trains
3) Staff
The single best thing you can do to drive down train cost is to put more people on each train.
Trains are expensive because the track is 99.9% empty.
If you could fill a train track as much as a road is filled, it would be very cheap
dredmorbius 12 hours ago [-]
Track utilisation is limited by a number of factors, including headways, much of which is governed by stopping distance.
I believe a general minimum practical headway allows about 10--12 trainsets per hour on a given track. At 400 passengers/trainset, that's roughly 4,000 to 4,800 passengers/hour, per track.
That compares with about 1,500 vehicles/hour per highway lane, or about 2,550 passengers/hour at the U.S. average of 1.7 passengers/vehicle.
I've seen some suggestion that headways could be reduced to 3--4 minutes, or 15--20 trainsets/hour. I know that some urban rapid transit systems (e.g., BART in San Francisco) achieve this, but only on a small section of the system (Colma to Oakland, transiting downtown SF, IIRC). Train speeds there peak at 70 MPH, and I believe are much slower for most of this portion of track.
londons_explore 7 hours ago [-]
Some urban subways have 30 second headways.
9cb14c1ec0 1 days ago [-]
Yes, let's make things more expensive, cause we experts know best. That poor guy that needs to attend a family funeral, he's a loser that should stay home. Inflation for the Win!
elil17 4 hours ago [-]
Ideally making polluting activities more expensive would go hand in hand with reducing inequality - so people could still afford needs like going to a funeral. A great example of this is Canada's Carbon Fee & Dividend system.
bestouff 9 hours ago [-]
Does he really "need" it though ? For thousands of years people didn't travel shi fast to attend funerals (they only did it locally), where they less happy about it ?
dudefeliciano 1 days ago [-]
and according to the article the last record was 200k planes per day on june 29 2025, while july 23rd had more than 280k - so while efficiency may be going up (how many of those 280k planes are in the modern 100-120mpg range?) total flights are as well. Result: total emissions are steadily increasing.
Findecanor 1 days ago [-]
I think the way airline tickets are priced is a big factor, and needs to change.
It is often cheaper to take a connecting flight to an airport and flying from there than to start from that airport.
That disincentivises taking a low-carbon-emission train to the airport and experiencing more of (and spending more in) the city near the airport than just its airport.
Often, for longer flights, the more stops, the cheaper the total ticket gets. Planes consume more fuel at take-off and landing, making the the carbon footprint increase with these cheaper tickets. And the more you fly, the more points you get that could pay for more flights.
It should be the other way around: air-travel carbon tax should be progressive. You should pay more each time if you fly more often. That would reduce the number of flights in total while still allowing everyone to take that "trip of a life-time".
nradov 18 hours ago [-]
But the bureaucrats and NGO employees who tell the rest of how to live will still be able to take unlimited flights to climate change conferences, right?
sleepyguy 24 hours ago [-]
Even hot air balloons burn fuel....How do you propose we cross great distances: horse, sailboat, or walk?
trallnag 20 hours ago [-]
I guess the suggestion is to not travel at all. How much of all air travel is for fun and leisure?
nradov 18 hours ago [-]
Right, people should just sit at home and be miserable. Fun is sinful.
bestouff 9 hours ago [-]
Can't you have fun in your life without taking a plane ? So weird.
doubled112 15 hours ago [-]
I see you’ve met my mother!
iso1631 1 days ago [-]
We're screwed and powerless so activate ostrich mode is one way to deal with things, at least on a personal level. Probably better for your health
buellerbueller 1 days ago [-]
I guess if you are really serious about saving the planet from airplanes, you could start a network of similar-feeling folks and begin randomly bombing enough flights to terrify the world into not flying.
Give yourself an edgy name, like the Children of Kali, to make it stick.
Honestly, if you think the stakes are that high then you implicate yourself with anything but fully committed action. Anything less, and you just seem preachy and screechy.
PS: It's a book called The Ministry of the Future. Try reading once in a while. Whoosh.
fusslo 1 days ago [-]
I recently read Days of Rage about the various groups committing political violence during the 60s and 70s. Weatherman, Black Panthers, Black Liberation Army, etc.
I don't know if there was really a 'message' more than just reporting what 'happened'. But, I have to say I came away with the idea that that kind of political violence is futile. Non-violent political action seemed to have MUCH more beneficial action than any bomb. (of course it wasn't as clear-cut between non-violent groups and revolutionary groups at the time)
Maybe thats only because I just read the ONE book.
constantius 20 hours ago [-]
A famous paper argued that, from 1960 to 2006, nonviolent resistance was twice as likely as violent resistance to achieve its goal: it's a paper that most activists I've ever met had heard of. The reasons are largely the perception of violent resistance by the bystanders, meaning the population.
However, there have been a number of criticisms to the paper about data coding, methodology, and interpretation/motivated reasoning. Recently, the author has also acknowledged that governments have adapted since 2006: her data says nonviolent resistance is still more effective, but that the success rate has cratered.
I tried to find some of the criticisms, but it's recent, so all AI generated, so I won't link before reading, but the criticisms I'm aware of I think are robust. All this to say, the idea that nonviolent resistance is more effective is comfortable and feels better, and there is a paper that says so, but your examples and those of a child comment are not about resistance to armed colonial oppression and it's not enough to form a blanket opinion about violent resistance.
bluGill 1 days ago [-]
The general impression from talking to people who live then (I was a baby in the 1970s so I knew/know a fair number). The violent groups were looked on as weird or kids who needed to grow up - they were ignored for the most part other than cheering on what the police did.
There is a reason Rosa Parks was chosen to start the bus boycott - she comes off as "just like me" to the average person. Thus when she couldn't take it anymore the rest of America didn't write her off.
dredmorbius 11 hours ago [-]
Different periods have seen different modes of action.
There was a tremendous amount of violence in the labour movement from the late 18th through mid-20th centuries, including numerous armed conflicts. This was perpetrated by both sides, though my sense is that capital was somewhat more prone to exacting violence on labour than vice versa.
The ANTIFA movement of the 1930s--1940s was a worldwide violent struggle, which ultimately proved effective. Nonviolent movements (say, the White Rose resistance in Germany) proved utterly ineffectual. It's useful to remember Gandhi's observation that ahimsa is predicated on an opponent with a conscience which can be shamed. That wasn't the case against Nazi Germany.
Civil rights, across multiple jurisdictions, has seen both violent and non-violent movements. The US civil rights movement of the 1960s is often seen as offering White America a choice between MLK's non-violent movement and the far more radical path pursued by the Nation of Islam, Black Panthers, and others.
The story is ... complex.
adrianN 1 days ago [-]
That is a terrible way to get the necessary support for climate action and would be actively harmful to the cause.
This argument has been made so often and in so much detail that I’m surprised to still see people suggest climate terrorism in, presumably, good faith.
buellerbueller 2 hours ago [-]
For what it is worth: in the novel, the point of bombing planes is not to get popular support for climate action, but to make it risky enough that people just stop taking planes.
kbart 1 days ago [-]
Modern aviation is an amazing engineering feat (all the environmental issues aside). With such numbers it means that "one in a million" failure occurs roughly evey week, but the fact that we have so little major incidents demonstrates how well aicrafts are engineered.
originalvichy 17 hours ago [-]
I’m worried that we will spend precious resources like oil on useless transport. I strongly believe that all of us who care deeply about the future of our civilization’s technological progress need to push for stronger limits on short fistance and low occupancy travel for air, land and sea.
Even if you are not alarmed about the environmental impact of flights as a share of global emissions, it’s no reason to spend our global oil reserves for useless travel. Airlines already optimize flights and routes, but the gap can be closed even further if we simply let go of the immediate convenience of booking flights.
datakan 1 days ago [-]
With numbers like that I guess they have no reason to make flights more comfortable or convenient. I just did a cross country flight and back 2 weeks ago and I'm still recovering from it. I really hate flying now.
richwater 1 days ago [-]
The real cost of air travel continues to go down as customers really only discriminate on price. Airlines have tried before to compete on other facets but everything failed.
The best you can do is look at specific carriers, and more importantly specifically what aircraft you'll be flying on.
A cross country flight in economy is going to be more comfortable in a Delta A220 than a United 737 Max. However, because of hubs and lack of competition many non-mega metros don't really have a large amount of choice.
Sleaker 18 hours ago [-]
Im not sure airline history agrees with you. My cursory knowledge from prior posts on HN like this had mentioned regulation/deregulation played a huge part in shaping the ways that airlines competed. I've heard that airlines don't compete on price/feature as much anymore because they don't have to, and kickbacks from all the credit card offerings/deals. Anecdotally I've noticed this year major airlines pulling out of certain hubs (southwest) so there is even less competition, but prices still seemed to go down among the remaining options!
Im not sure how accurate this is, so willing to be shown differently!
datakan 1 days ago [-]
Maybe, I don't know. Sprit Airlines closing up abruptly like it did may refute your premise. They were the cheapest of the cheap, people hated them and now they are gone.
richwater 1 days ago [-]
As the country exited COVID, mainline carriers began to really push their basic and barebones fares which directly took away business from ULCCs like Spirit. Spirit never really leveraged their credit cards effectively to help subsidize the cost of seats.
ULCCs thrive when they can maximize their time in the sky across as many different flights as possible. Filling up the day with many different flights allows them to rake in checked-baggage fees, reserved seat fees etc more often than longer mainline carrier flights. All of this went out the window when a large portion of their A320 fleet was grounded because of the P&W engine issues. This absolutely killed their utilization percentage.
Spirit died way more because of business management than it did because customers didn't choose on price.
nradov 18 hours ago [-]
That's not completely true. Delta Airlines became the most profitable of the four major US carriers specifically by focusing on an improved customer experience. This allowed them to charge slightly higher ticket prices, and led to increased usage of their branded credit card. United Airlines is now trying to mimic that model. Of course we've all had some bad experiences on Delta but the statistics show that on average their performance and customer satisfaction is higher.
1 days ago [-]
collabs 1 days ago [-]
> With numbers like that I guess they have no reason to make flights more comfortable or convenient. I just did a cross country flight and back 2 weeks ago and I'm still recovering from it. I really hate flying now.
My expectations are low and yet airlines somehow manage to fail.
I made the mistake of booking a flight with frontier
and they "delayed" the flight several times before eventually canceling the whole flight.
histriosum 24 hours ago [-]
All airlines do this. It’s frustrating, and it has to do with playing the game with the DOT. They are punished for cancelling flights, but not delaying them, so the game is to delay rather than cancel until there is truly no option but to cancel. It’s an area of regulation that needs more work.
I am a current airline pilot, and I end up flying on all of them in order to get to and from work. Trust me, they all do this. The impact to you may be less if it’s an airline with more flights, because that airline has more options to recover and fix your experience, but they all do it.
kilroy123 1 days ago [-]
I was up in the air flying that day.
It didn't seem busy at all. Everything was on time, quick, and smooth on both sides. My partner and I commented on how smooth everything went.
richwater 1 days ago [-]
The new Airbus Project Sunrise aircraft also set the record for longest passenger aircraft flight
RankingMember 1 days ago [-]
Just looked that up. Good lord, they need to amend the universal declaration of human rights to include flying people 24 hours straight in coach as a violation.
brainwad 3 hours ago [-]
I would pay a premium for it. The direct flight is still better than being interrupted halfway through your "night", and then having to trudge through a huge transfer airport just to get on another plane for another 8-14h. Also, the direct flight will be able to set the cabin lights and meal schedule optimally for you, unlike the stopover flights. And it's several hours quicker.
The downside is that it doesn't scale beyond the biggest city pairs: you'd need N^2 direct flights vs 2N flights via a hub.
richwater 1 days ago [-]
It will surely be a tough sell. It will be very expensive (comparatively), and most travelers won't even want to do it. There's a reason Ethiad is so successful on these kinds of flights because their hub creates a natural stopping point halfway.
Wildgoose 1 days ago [-]
This seems like madness to me. A fully loaded 747 has around 140,000 litres of energy-dense jet fuel containing between 2.2 and 2.9 GWh worth of energy - or around two hours output of a typical power station.
This level of profligacy is simply not sustainable.
nancyminusone 1 days ago [-]
Optimization for this problem looks like making it so people and items do not need fast transportation, but I don't see that happening any time soon.
RankingMember 1 days ago [-]
Parkinson's Law needs a moderator in the form of agreed-upon limits. How we get there, I have no idea, but it's well-overdue.
noosphr 1 days ago [-]
Yes, we need to shut down the power plants. People lived without electricity for millions of years, they can always get back to it. /s
chneu 1 days ago [-]
To summarize, this is the equivalent of someone putting their fingers in their ear and going, "lalalalalala I'm not listening" while someone tells them to stop being a consumption monster.
noosphr 19 hours ago [-]
Yes, please turn off your computer and stop killing the planet.
jmye 22 hours ago [-]
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RankingMember 1 days ago [-]
To me, the parent's statement was a comment on the enormity of aircraft fuel used.
and wasn't there talk in europe of jet fuel shortages. and governments everywhere are supposed to run out of emergency oil supplies in the next 1 to 6 months?
i'm a bit confused.
Most people fly because they have to, family gatherings, planned vacations, business trips.
The number of people genuinely deterred by a small amount in price is still going to be small.
Also, inflation adjusted, fuel isn't that expensive. 80/90$ a barrel are prices we've seen already decades ago.
So is the private (ICE) motorcar. ~4000kg of CO2/y for typical US use.
It’s also the activity least likely to be decarbonised.
Of course there are alternatives, I haven’t flown on a plane since 2001.
A lot if not most airplane traffic is holiday related, and only a handful of rich people actually get to enjoy it. There's no need for it.
A lot of
Further than removing subsidies, if flight cost would include its negative externalities, few would fly.
Once you include getting out of Stockholm to the airport, security, boarding, the flight itself, possible baggage collection, and the trip into Umeå, I would be surprised if the total were much below 4 hours. Comparable German domestic flights such as Hamburg–Munich usually took me around 4–4.5 hours in practice in the past when traveling for work before the pandemic.
That makes the train a 6–8 hour alternative to a roughly 4-hour flight journey. Whether that is viable depends on the traveller, but it is certainly more competitive than “1 hour versus 8 hours” suggests.
I admit that for me, living about an hour north of the Hamburg main station but only 15 minutes from the airport, the plance for a business trip in Munich can still be a viable (albeit seldom taken) option. More often than not, if time permits, I take the train, work on the train. But as said - there still are situations, that make flying such a distance viable (to me).
I just wanted to point out, that it is not as clear cut as 1 hour vs. 6 to 8 hours.
Of course there are a lot of variables, if instead I leave from my house the aircraft would actually be faster, mostly due to the extra time it takes to get to Central London and from Waterloo to Euston.
In reality we usually drive in about 6-8 hours because, as a family of 4 traveling, it's considerably cheaper even before you take into account having transport on the other end.
I and a friend once started at Stockholm Central station to Malmö Central Station at the same time. I boarded a bullet train; he took the bus to the airport ... We arrived at the same time six hours later.
I've been looking at travel in Japan recently. Between Hiroshima and Tokyo, the bullet train (fast Shinkansen) and flight are both about four hours.
A bullet train is much more comfortable than flight within these limits because there are so fewer steps: no travel to/from airport, fewer tickets to book and often no check-in or security checkpoint.
For rail? You're looking at an order of magnitude more for planning and construction, all new infrastructure, all new rail stock. It will take a much larger passenger base to justify the expense and effort.
Airplanes don't just shine for longer trips. There have been some interesting developments with commuter airplanes that are either all electric or hybrid with a 200-plus-mile range. If they are as energy efficient as they promise to be, we could see a resurgence in municipal airports for transportation between regional centers where rail is either unavailable or excessively expensive.
Some of those are amenable to high-speed variants, some less so. And once you've established transport corridors, much of the hard part (rights-of-way acquisition) is accomplished, so that adding a high-speed route becomes far more tractable.
For the most part, actual construction costs are fairly modest, modulo bridges and tunnels, both of which can of course be quite expensive.
I think increasing the viability of travel between smaller airports is a good thing for those times when you don't want to spend a lot of time traveling or waiting for a transit vehicle. If the equivalent of micromobility air travel comes to fruition, you'll see two- or three-person vehicles that get up and go when someone wants a ride. Another benefit could be the airport-to-airport delivery of packages with different-sized drone craft and autonomous navigation.
#IFoundMyFlyingCar
I think a lot of people do not understand just how massive the US is.
Sure some routes could have viable alternatives, but others just do not.
Air travel is a very recent modern invention(1960s, at least for everyday folk) and people act like flying around the world is a right.
Modern capitalism is an excess machine and it'll feed us constant excuses for why our reasons are valid. Air travel is a great example. Travel and tourism are seen as "musts" by people nowadays. It's insane how destructive and unnecessary it is. It's wild how entitled everyone is nowadays. I'll happily take down votes for calling out the insane excess that we have nowadays. We're killing ourselves one funco pop at a time and we all deserve that funco pop according to the latest excuse(won't someone blame the rich!!!)
Also, on travel, I think there's a lot to be said for the value of travel and being exposed to other cultures and societies. "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness[..]" and all that.
Just having a carbon tax, that accurately prices the cost of carbon, is enough. It's one of the few taxes that has broad support among economists. However in a democracy like the US I don't see how it ever gets implemented and even if it does, it will get ripped up 2-4 years later.
People who complain about aviation do more harm than good.
We would accomplish more by closing a few coal power plants and replacing them with renewables or nuclear. And no one would even notice.
Can you believe it’s almost 2030 and we still haven’t reached peak coal.
I find this a bit hard to swallow. It speaks to a sense of impunity wrt emissions for a demographic that very arguably drives much of the rest of the way energy is consumed. It is one of many choice this demographic has the privelage of making, in contrast to much of the rest of the population.
Have you ever met a coal or oil exec who was shy about flying? If anything, the latter would no doubt lobby hard against efforts to reign in flights, as it's directly tied to the interests of their industry.
It’s ridiculous the amount of fossil fuels we still burn for electricity.
This “shame, shame” garbage that people did never worked.
In either case, I think we can be expected to walk and chew gum; to see every source of emissions as its own individual problem (scaled to proportion, ofc) AND recognize that they inevitably feed into each other. To do less is counterproductive, IMO.
Except this isn't happening. Oil is subsidised (and not just by the constant action for the last 50 years to keep oil flowing from the middle east), and has been for decades. Even coal is subsidised in the US
Renewables are increasingly banned in the US.
I agree the nonsense about the tree botherers saying "we need to be vegetarian and use no more than 1kWh a day of energy" are twats that do more harm than good, but the US specifically has an agenda against renewable energy, presumably because it's not the subscription model that the US loves. You buy your solar panel and it works for decades. You buy a gallon of gas and you're back the next day to buy it again.
The total average across the industry in 2018 was between 67 and 81 mpg. Modern planes are in the 100-120mpg range.
The single best thing you can do to drive down train cost is to put more people on each train.
Based on these sources: https://www.statista.com/chart/20169/gb-rail-fare-spending-b...
https://transport.ec.europa.eu/document/download/f5c82d86-23...
If you could fill a train track as much as a road is filled, it would be very cheap
I believe a general minimum practical headway allows about 10--12 trainsets per hour on a given track. At 400 passengers/trainset, that's roughly 4,000 to 4,800 passengers/hour, per track.
That compares with about 1,500 vehicles/hour per highway lane, or about 2,550 passengers/hour at the U.S. average of 1.7 passengers/vehicle.
I've seen some suggestion that headways could be reduced to 3--4 minutes, or 15--20 trainsets/hour. I know that some urban rapid transit systems (e.g., BART in San Francisco) achieve this, but only on a small section of the system (Colma to Oakland, transiting downtown SF, IIRC). Train speeds there peak at 70 MPH, and I believe are much slower for most of this portion of track.
It is often cheaper to take a connecting flight to an airport and flying from there than to start from that airport. That disincentivises taking a low-carbon-emission train to the airport and experiencing more of (and spending more in) the city near the airport than just its airport.
Often, for longer flights, the more stops, the cheaper the total ticket gets. Planes consume more fuel at take-off and landing, making the the carbon footprint increase with these cheaper tickets. And the more you fly, the more points you get that could pay for more flights.
It should be the other way around: air-travel carbon tax should be progressive. You should pay more each time if you fly more often. That would reduce the number of flights in total while still allowing everyone to take that "trip of a life-time".
Give yourself an edgy name, like the Children of Kali, to make it stick.
Honestly, if you think the stakes are that high then you implicate yourself with anything but fully committed action. Anything less, and you just seem preachy and screechy.
PS: It's a book called The Ministry of the Future. Try reading once in a while. Whoosh.
I don't know if there was really a 'message' more than just reporting what 'happened'. But, I have to say I came away with the idea that that kind of political violence is futile. Non-violent political action seemed to have MUCH more beneficial action than any bomb. (of course it wasn't as clear-cut between non-violent groups and revolutionary groups at the time)
Maybe thats only because I just read the ONE book.
However, there have been a number of criticisms to the paper about data coding, methodology, and interpretation/motivated reasoning. Recently, the author has also acknowledged that governments have adapted since 2006: her data says nonviolent resistance is still more effective, but that the success rate has cratered.
I tried to find some of the criticisms, but it's recent, so all AI generated, so I won't link before reading, but the criticisms I'm aware of I think are robust. All this to say, the idea that nonviolent resistance is more effective is comfortable and feels better, and there is a paper that says so, but your examples and those of a child comment are not about resistance to armed colonial oppression and it's not enough to form a blanket opinion about violent resistance.
There is a reason Rosa Parks was chosen to start the bus boycott - she comes off as "just like me" to the average person. Thus when she couldn't take it anymore the rest of America didn't write her off.
There was a tremendous amount of violence in the labour movement from the late 18th through mid-20th centuries, including numerous armed conflicts. This was perpetrated by both sides, though my sense is that capital was somewhat more prone to exacting violence on labour than vice versa.
The ANTIFA movement of the 1930s--1940s was a worldwide violent struggle, which ultimately proved effective. Nonviolent movements (say, the White Rose resistance in Germany) proved utterly ineffectual. It's useful to remember Gandhi's observation that ahimsa is predicated on an opponent with a conscience which can be shamed. That wasn't the case against Nazi Germany.
Civil rights, across multiple jurisdictions, has seen both violent and non-violent movements. The US civil rights movement of the 1960s is often seen as offering White America a choice between MLK's non-violent movement and the far more radical path pursued by the Nation of Islam, Black Panthers, and others.
The story is ... complex.
This argument has been made so often and in so much detail that I’m surprised to still see people suggest climate terrorism in, presumably, good faith.
Even if you are not alarmed about the environmental impact of flights as a share of global emissions, it’s no reason to spend our global oil reserves for useless travel. Airlines already optimize flights and routes, but the gap can be closed even further if we simply let go of the immediate convenience of booking flights.
The best you can do is look at specific carriers, and more importantly specifically what aircraft you'll be flying on.
A cross country flight in economy is going to be more comfortable in a Delta A220 than a United 737 Max. However, because of hubs and lack of competition many non-mega metros don't really have a large amount of choice.
Im not sure how accurate this is, so willing to be shown differently!
ULCCs thrive when they can maximize their time in the sky across as many different flights as possible. Filling up the day with many different flights allows them to rake in checked-baggage fees, reserved seat fees etc more often than longer mainline carrier flights. All of this went out the window when a large portion of their A320 fleet was grounded because of the P&W engine issues. This absolutely killed their utilization percentage.
Spirit died way more because of business management than it did because customers didn't choose on price.
My expectations are low and yet airlines somehow manage to fail. I made the mistake of booking a flight with frontier and they "delayed" the flight several times before eventually canceling the whole flight.
I am a current airline pilot, and I end up flying on all of them in order to get to and from work. Trust me, they all do this. The impact to you may be less if it’s an airline with more flights, because that airline has more options to recover and fix your experience, but they all do it.
It didn't seem busy at all. Everything was on time, quick, and smooth on both sides. My partner and I commented on how smooth everything went.
The downside is that it doesn't scale beyond the biggest city pairs: you'd need N^2 direct flights vs 2N flights via a hub.
This level of profligacy is simply not sustainable.