steveholt

Sorry for some of the very obnoxious and tiresome replies in this thread. People think saying the word "clickbait" is smart criticism or mentioning the phrase "virtue signaling" is a meaningful point in response to a genuine question when they themselves are the one guilty of what they're suggesting.

It's a fair question, and I suspect if most people engaged with it genuinely, the fairest answer you'll probably get is "The plane would still be taking off without me." I'm quite confident the percentage of MRs on a given flight on any given day are incredibly slim and so we're looking at the difference between 160 on a plane and 160.001 people on a plane.

In terms of what I do to counteract that, I don't commute for my work, and when I do commute, I'm using public transportation, so I suspect I'm saving quite a bit in terms of consumption that way. It's a big mish-mosh in my head, but I'm going to do the math and figure out whether I'm actually neutral versus the average person after reading your post. Thanks for writing!

Madone59

You still don't get it. You're telling the pine cones to stop burning while redwoods are reduced to ash all around you.

2015 Total USA Passenger numbers: 895,500,000
Average length of 10 busiest routes in USA: 921mi
Length of JFK-MIA: 1,090mi
Carbon footprint JFK-MIA: .16 tonnes (per person one way)

Total carbon footprint of 2015 domestic travel over average route: 143,280,000 tonnes.

OK. So how many people Mileage run? No one knows so below are a few options to pick from.

Carbon footprint of mileage runners:

• 25,000mr = 4,000 ton
• 50,000mr = 8,000ton
• 100,000mr = 16,000ton
• 200,000mr = 32,000ton
• 300,000mr = 48,000ton

This means 100,000 mileage run segments 0.0111 of total us domestic CO2.

According to the EPA the average car produces 4.7 tonnes of CO2 per year. This means for each 25,000MRs there are 851+/- cars are represented........there are 253,000,000 cars and trucks on the road in the united states.

FCIan I will say it again. If we all stopped yesterday our absence would have no impacted on the marco CO2 footprint of the aviation industry.

"Mileage run ethics" used to be a discussion about if you lied to a customs official or told the truth when doing a short international turn. Lets keep it that way.

FCIan

Thanks for the comments SteveHolt - great post to round things off.

It depends how we frame the argument as to how it is perceived. 1) Against all CO2 emissions, we are talking such a small value that this appears as an insignificant practise - the case for. 2) Frame it in terms of our own personal CO2 allowances and people doing mileage runs would struggle to achieve a reasonable personal amount of under 10 tons a year, I'm sure - the case against.

I appreciate it is aggravating to have someone come onto our forum and suggest that something might be wrong in what is going on. If you've thought about it a little deeper as a result of this post but are still coming to the conclusions that you are happy with the practise, then great. This thread has developed my thoughts on the topic and I thank all contributors for their input. I still see it as a wasteful practise but I'm grateful that people do think about their actions logically and don't just mindlessly do it in their own benefit.

Madone59

All,

I am no longer a mileage runner. I, your fellow flat butted compatriot have become a micro vacationer!!

These micro vacations or "MV's" range from whatever the MCT is in a particular airport to two or three days. My MV's focus on exploring airports, airport lounges, airplanes and sometimes transit hotels but they can focus on anything you want! You can binge watch a new show, read some books you've been meaning to crack open or even gaze aimlessly at the earth.

I strongly encourage others to join the MV movement. You get to meet interesting people (for a few hours at a time), try many many different McDonald's, and occasionally sleep! Awesome right? I know! It is a lot of fun! Also. Here is the best part......because these [meaningless] micro trips are "vacations" they are socially acceptable and this vice will be easy to explain to friends, family and Sir David Attenborough.


,
M59

nobodyherebutme

The OP's article about the impact of award miles makes me realize that not only do the MRs themselves impact the environment, but so do the miles earned as a result of the MRs. Fortunately, airlines are helping that secondary effect by making it harder and more "expensive" to redeem award miles Way to go United!

Tblack15

Samesies.

Sorry, but I haven't read through this.. Honestly, the daily flyers.. like the various GS and weekly flyers use 4 or 5x the amount of CO2 than I do.

Simple math. Mileage runners aren't a massive segment and the numbers are dwindling due to full planes & shrinking value return.

"Mileage Runners to blame for global warming" is not a headline one would find on any reputable news service.

beyounged

@Madone59 Interesting name, and I feel the same. I, however, combine it with another polar opposite side of travelling. I backpack with my MR's, so I call then packruns. Mostly I want to make my trips as long as possible and cut down cpm, so I usually spend at least 2 to 3 days at a local hostel. After a year or so, I have met so many friends that most of the places in Europe, Asia, Oceania and North America become possible to stay with no accommodation cost because my friends would let me live with them. It is hilarious to think about hopping off the QR SGN J fare and then take a 20 cents bus to a 5-dollar-a-night hostel. Hotel statuses are of little importance to me, so I opted for the cheapest wherever I go. Then you can use a packrun to position for another pack run, just last month I hopped on the AMS-MEX-MGA/SJO/MGA/UIO deal with AM, then caught the MEX-SCL-IPC deal with LA, and then caught UA China 303 ai deal, and if I had more time I would have then catch the NH YVR-HND-SYD J deal. But a lot of people do not have as much time as I do, so I understand them doing direct turns, but I would like to think I can live with my carbon footprint by doing this kind of thing.

@OP
I think you know what you are in for, you are touching some twitchy nerves here. I would like to think this as a marginal cost/utility issue. First of all, we all know MRunners are a very very small minority in the overall flying population. If MRunners are anywhere close to 1% of the total traffic, then the airlines would certainly devalue the program to curb losses, so MRunners move on to other airlines. This is how MR work, take advantage of a program to make it more lucrative than it should be, so it has to be concealed under the mainstream and cannot be a major weekend sport. So let's say I am on this airplane SFO-HKG, and a normal carbon footprint calculator would calculate the amount of TOTAL output by this 777-300ER from gate to gate, then divide it by the total number of passengers for each of us, but for me being on it or not, there is almost no change to total emissions. The marginal carbon output is my true carbon footprint, which is exceedingly small, because I have extremely low elasticity(high flexibility) in my demand. If this flight is slightly more expensive, I would go to OMA, AEP, or even JUB for god knows I only care about cpm. So my marginal contribution is very small because I do not demand that I have to be in HKG this weekend for a conference. A person with REAL demand of this route is part of who made this route exist, and their carbon footprint should take into account of that. My real contribution is my weight and my luggage only, so it should only be the difference of fuel consumed with and without me onboard, not the total fuel consumption divide # of people+1, which is me. Another important part is that aviation is a very wasteful industry, most food have to be discarded upon landing, and everything has extras, so I would like to think I am more there to reduce waste because I am more flexible as most MRunners. For a 100 dollar intercontinental, I would not bicker about chicken or beef. So I would love to argue that in reality MRunners have a much lower carbon output than the number a carbon calculator spits out, because it does not know the economics of carbon, just mathematics. But this is just my two cents, I spent my college years in both economics and climate science, so if you have to argue that is my way of coping then I have nothing to stop you.

Madone59

Thanks - you know it's a bike tho, right? The Trek Madone 5.9. I'm not a mad one.

dr88

This has probably been said upthread, but I’d need a couple more drinks to read this all the way through.

You’re a journalist but you don’t know how to spell the word “mileage”?

craigsnyc

Yeah, no...you ARE the MAD ONE. seriously. mad.

DavidBRKLYN

It seems to me a valid question at the outset but one that gets quite complicated and unanswerable quite quickly when one tries to go from broad strokes to specifics...

For example: is there a set amount of carbon output per person that is too much or is it more relative? If relative, to your own norm or to society as a whole?

I travel non-stop for work so were I to do the odd MR here and there (I never have, btw, but that's not the point) it would not be very significant compared to my overall airplane carbon output. Similarly, all MRs are not very significant to overall global airplane carbon output. So is it about significant amounts or more an "every little bit helps" kind of thing?

Sure, I could try to earn a living a different way or people could travel less but insisting upon that is like me telling a professional food critic they should be a vegan because animal agriculture also has a large carbon output (more than the entire transportation sector by some estimates).

Let's look at that, then: what if I fly the MR but I get a vegan meal on the plane? What about all the plastic? If the airlines use paper products, then can people do MRs?

Of course, a lot of the above are silly arguments. The point is that focusing on MRs as source of carbon emissions that needs to be addressed is equally silly.

There are many things that can and should be done to responsibly curtail the global carbon output. If politicians and society as a whole all decided to act more responsibly along these lines across the board the carbon emissions would be such that everyone could do as much leisure travel (and MRs) as they wanted to without concern.

Perhaps that would be a more useful subject for an article if the goal is less to quibble about travel hackers and more to address anthropogenic global warming.

Just a thought, anyway.

flyupfrnt

Now after reading this I sit here thinking about how not once, but twice I drove my SUV from Seattle to Portland at less than eco friendly rates of speed in order to catch the first of a 6 or 7 segment Mileage run all over the USA (Virgin America deal) and then returned to PDX & Drove home to Seattle in that same SUV at an equally non eco friendly rate of speed. Bad Carbon footprint indeed. Sorry, not sorry. Good reading though.

C W

I'll acknowledge that air travel does increase an individual's carbon footprint. Those of us here who fly extraordinary amounts are responsible for additional emissions.

But mileage runs aren't part of that equation. And it's not because of how few of them there are, as others have argued, even though that is true in the global aviation marketplace.

Fundamentally mileage runs fill space that would otherwise be unsold on flights that are already flying. To prove this, let's back up a little bit.

It is facile and convenient to claim that emissions are attributed to passengers as a direct function of their miles traveled, yet it is not the economic reality. Airlines operate complex networks of flights and fill those flights with complex revenue management algorithms. A connecting itinerary offered at the same or lower price as direct is likely filling underutilized capacity on the connecting routes which are being operated for distinct reasons.

It is self evident that emissions are not increased without additional flights. The extra weight of a passenger is negligible compared to the weight of an airliner. For example an A330-300 weighs 509,000 lb with a full fuel load and its approximately 300 pax with luggage weigh perhaps 200 pounds each.

I think it is a reasonable assumption that airlines do not add additional flights lightly. They must consistently have sufficient demand at high enough fares to economically operate the extra capacity.

Here is an AviationWeek document listing the approximate CASM (cost per available seat mile) of various aircraft operated by US airlines. If you peruse it, you'll see no type comes in under $0.062/mile/seat and most are in the $0.07-$0.08 range. This of course does not account for all the other costs involved in running an airline, like marketing, management, customer service, and airport amenities and staffing.

Therefore we can confidently assume that unless an airline is exceeding the CASM involved in operating a route, they will not add additional frequencies to or upgage the route.

If you spend some time reading the Mileage Run Deals forum you'll see that the members are obsessed with CPM, or cost-per-mile. $0.06 is on the high side, $0.04 is good, and anything at or below $0.03 is great. Considering the CASMs shown above, in addition to the other costs of providing the flights, it is obvious that the revenue airlines derive from mileage runners is insufficient to cause airlines to increase the number of flights they operate. It would cause airlines to lose money to increase flights to service mileage runners. Mileage runners are only filling otherwise unsold seats.

Further, most mileage run deals don't exist in perpetuity. They exist during particular seasons or occasionally. If it isn't even possible to buy a deal across a large timeframe, an airline isn't going to make long-term aircraft frequency and type selections based on the occasional sale of very cheap fares.

Let's try this for an analogy. Think of cheap, same-day theater tickets. Where I live in London you can line up to buy them in a morning at an extremely steep discount because those seats would otherwise go unsold. Do you really think that theaters will add performances and extend their runs because lots of people are spending £15 day-of instead of £100+ in advance? Of course not, and it is the same case with mileage runs. They are insufficiently lucrative for the airlines to cause route expansions and when the routes are full already it is impossible to buy mileage run-worthy fares. Just like when the theater is sold out no cheap same-day tickets are offered.

FlyingEgghead

I appreciate the questions raised. I think appealing to the (tiny) fraction that MRs constitute of all air travel or all carbon emissions is unsatisfactory, as such reasoning could be used to evade almost any personal responsibility on the basis that I am only one of billions of people in the world. Rather, if there is a societal cost to carbon emissions, then each and every carbon-emitting activity should be weighed against this cost. This has the benefit of transforming the problem from ethics to economics.

​​​​​​To provide some order-of-magnitude numbers that haven't been mentioned here, the cost of carbon offsets for a passenger's air travel has been estimated at 0.2 cents per mile. This corresponds roughly to 0.4 pounds of CO2 per passenger-mile and $10 per ton of CO2 offset.

Thus, for the average passenger, accounting for carbon is similar to a fare increase of 0.2 cpm, which may be noticeable but would rarely be decisive in comparison to fares of say 4-40 cpm. In other words, the scale of value derived from air travel (even MRs), as shown by willingness to pay, is high enough that it is generally worthwhile to continue and to seek emission reductions elsewhere (the market price of offsets is tied to the current lowest-value carbon-emitting activities).

Beyond this, beyounged and C W make important points that the actual marginal emissions from MRs, because of their price sensitivity, are likely much less than for average passengers.

So one can make an argument that any passengers (including MRs) who don't offset their marginal emissions, should. This is not based on a vague ethical judgment of whether a trip is "necessary", but on pursuing the most efficient way to hold down emissions. The vast majority of air travel (including MRs) does appear to remain economically appropriate even if this adjustment were made.

FCIan

Is there anything I could say that would convince you to a) Complete this carbon footprint calculator in order to discover what your footprint is and b) reduce it if your results are over 10 tons per year.

Calculator: https://carbonfund.org/calculate-you...hoCn3UQAvD_BwE

Or the WWF calculator is more user friendly but it is UK based: http://footprint.wwf.org.uk/