SK2751

I think this is a misunderstanding. You do not need a massive movement. Flight connection go and come, fairly small local fluctuations change the profits sufficiently to cause airlines to reorganize. Every new passenger creates more demand that affects airline decisions. It does seem fairly inefficient to fly a distance that one can drive in 2h (and presumably a good train line would do in half of that). If you are on a 100 seat airliner, you increased the demand by 1% roughly. I think, it is much reasonable to think in terms of the number of hours flown, or the dollars you spent on the air travel. Airlines operate on fairly large scale, and the low of large numbers kick in. You do not need a massive movement to affect it. A closure of a mid-size company can cause a local air connection to disappear (or opening an appear).

Disclaimer: Don't get me wrong. I am a great fun of air travel, and the current madness against it freaks me out. Especially that there is no discussion of values the travels create, and distinction of value of various flights (See for example the recent British idea to tax frequent travelers more than ad hoc travelers, so taxing more mostly value producing work against not taxing leisure travel that one could easily substitute with something much less environment harmful; especially at the times that apparently leisure travel is becoming a bigger market than business travel, at least in some parts of the word). Still I do believe that we need to be self conscious to optimize how our travel affects the environment, and we do need to apply pressure on the industry to transport us in increasingly green ways.