47Aitken

Why should we in Scotland , N Ireland , Newcastle ect be the sacrifical lamb to be hung out to,alow more slots to be made available to non UK destinations?

flatlander

We can definitely cement the dominance of south-east England in the UK economy and prosperity, while exacerbating its housing and other problems, by removing UK domestic flights. Even more so if we remove UK domestic flights without a high speed ground connection (with predictable pricing and sufficient capacity) from Scotland and Northern England. Is that the plan?

Poor communications (in this case the logistics sense, not the data-transfer sense) already adversely affect the economy, and therefore health and wellbeing, of people living in smaller cities and rural areas remote from S-E England. Further worsening them will only exacerbate that problem. Who do we want to cut off in the name of climate emergency? Will we relocate them to cities? What will happen to the work they do - principally growing the food eaten in the cities?

It's a bit more complicated than "climate emergency == no domestic aviation".

Globaliser

Because you can get to local destinations by other means, but taking the train to Hong Kong is significantly more inconvenient?

47Aitken

Yes and how about the 30 odd daily flights within Scotland to the the islands and the 20 odd from Scotland to N Ireland , we dont all have access to private yachts - lets get real !

GrayAnderson

Clearly, the C-02 is some new aircraft designation :-p

SKRan

https://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...-a9154581.html

SKRan

And yet HS2 also gets review because of environmental concerns. Debates on these national important issues are important but decision must be taken in due course, otherwise time is wasted and the environment gets hit both ways.

The poor rail performance contributed to the domestic aviation market. If I can reach central London and LHR for under 3 hours from a Scottish or Northern English town centre station on frequent and reliable train services, I would definitely choose rail. Eurostar on London-Paris market is a prominent example.

Franchising might end in this upcoming Queen’s speech?

Bohinjska Bistrica

HS2 is also under review on account of its costs rising and this apparently being suppressed by a former Chancellor who now edits a newspaper. This is the main driver behind it - determine if the cost is worth it.

This is going off topic, but I'm not sure about HS2. I support it in principle but fear costs will continue to balloon (which they already have) and that we'll end up with the line stopping in Manchester and achieving little other than stretching the London commuter belt further north. It is also a pity that it won't bring the journey from London to Edinburgh down to the 3hr mark, although I assume the cost required to do this would be prohibitive.

Back on topic(ish) Using rail transport can only replace domestic flying to a certain extent. Connections etc. would be a disaster without domestic flights even on short segments like MAN-LHR. Unless BA wants to move aircraft to EDI, GLA, MAN etc, connecting flights are here to stay.

gms

But do these "people" actually need to travel to some of the further parts of the UK on a regular basis? I hear such arguments that are always based on the assumption that people start their journeys in the centre of London and want to go to the centre of Edinburgh, Glasgow, etc. If I want to visit family in Scotland for a weekend, it simply is not viable by train. I would need to take the Friday afternoon off work to get into London, across London and catch a train that would get me there the same day (albeit too late to then get public transport at that end). Then on return you have to leave by lunchtime and run the gauntlet of weekend engineering works, possibly with the pleasure of a replacement bus service for part of your journey. I would then be paying twice as much for a door-to-door journey that would take twice as long!

Given the amount of concrete used in the rail industry, I am sceptical that there is really such a gap in terms of environmental impact between the two forms of transport if you take the construction impact into consideration.

s0ssos

Yes. Don't bigger people use up more resources?

s0ssos

In the past they got everywhere without airplanes. Just calling it "convenience" means you think people who fly are just flying for "convenience"? In the same way people who drive do it for convenience? Maybe we should ban cars as well, if people can walk there in a day (let's say 20km). It is better for everybody that way.

thebigben

Sure. Tall people get the business class seats and smaller people get the densified economy cabin then

littlefish

I don't really see anything to attribute more weight to a BA CE passenger than a BA ET passenger; casual observations of people, bags and luggage carousels admittedly.
That leaves the seat weight. Well the modern seats come in at around 9 or 10kg each. So taking 50% of that for the marginal extra weight for a CE passenger on flights with middle seats free; gets us to +5kg … maybe a tad more for heavier crockery!
Anyway, applying that extra to somewhere in the order of 60kg to 120kg for the average passenger/baggage combo is pretty marginal. I'm happy to allow Prospero his 1.0x

NickB

This would be a reasonable approximation if we assumed that an empty aircraft has a weight of 0kg. I do not think that such a plane has been designed yet, so the fewer the number of passengers in a plane, the higher the consumption per passenger. A CE passenger occupies 1.5 more space than a Y passenger (4 CE passengers per row instead of 6 Y passengers per row). You are correct that we need to factor in that there will notionally be 200 kg less in pax+bag in a CE row due to their being only 4 passengers instead of 6. So, So, the multiplier should be is a little less than 1.5, hence why I suggest to discount one out of every 10 flights as a rough approximation. I do not have the competence to do proper calculations on this so I admit that it is an extremely rough guesstimate. Those on this board who dream of Breguet equations at night can undoubtedly tell us more as to whether a reduction of, say, 1200kg in payload (i.e. if we assume 6 rows of CE=12 fewer passengers than in an all-Y config) in a typical A320 family intra-European flight leads to substantially more than a 10% decrease in fuel consumption, in which case the discount factor on the notion 1.5 differential between Y and C would have to be increased.

Prospero

Just as well I neglected to mention those CE flights this year where I’ve been the beneficiary of theoretical seating