Flights of fancy

Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary is a reliable source for a good quote. The latest is his reaction to the British transport secretary’s plans to replace short-haul flights with a high-speed rail network “For reasons of carbon reduction and wider environmental benefits”.

O’Leary’s take on this was:

“It is insane.”
And…
“On [return] domestic flights from Glasgow to London passengers are paying £20 in taxes while they continue to subsidise the s*** out of the railways. Substituting one form of transport that is heavily taxed for a form of transport that is heavily subsidised is not the answer.”

This may not be the most in-depth assessment of the transport secretary’s plans, but I would have to agree when O’Leary says that this ‘is not the answer’. Sadly for both parties, the answer may be to travel less, not just to travel in a different fashion.

However newsworthy and headline-grabbing O’Leary’s statements are, they are reflective of a somewhat shallow analysis of the issue by the aviation industry, and highlight a missed opportunity. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) tried to use evidence from a University of Berkeley study titled ‘Environmental assessment of passenger transportation should include infrastructure and supply chains’ to show that emissions from rail may well be equal to those from aviation.

The IATA picked the wrong study. Its author Mikhail Chester said recently that:

“One of the surprising results is that for aircraft, the majority of carbon monoxide emissions are not from aircrafts themselves, but from ground support equipment, particularly the gasoline baggage tractors”.

The study’s main conclusion was that when making environmental assessments of modes of transport, we should take into account all factors surrounding the creation and running of a transit system, not just the emissions at the time of operation. The airline industry does not come out of the report smelling of roses, though it is easy to take the results of the study out of context.

Oddly, Lord Adonis, the transport secretary, does not seem to be anti-aviation, supporting the third runway at Heathrow with this logic:

“If you look at projections for long-haul air demand the third runway just on long- haul demand alone is justified”

This suggests that he believes any demand must be met by supply, which is perhaps not the best foundation for a policy of cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Some of his other comments suggest that he is misjudging the intelligence of the various industries involved, not to mention the public:

“If we make it a national priority, then it is affordable. If we don’t, then it is not. It’s as simple as that”.

From these statements, it appears that we have a transport secretary who supports and opposes aviation, does not quite understand the link between transport and climate change, and grossly oversimplifies very complex issues.

The aviation industry needs to engage in serious and honest debate, rather than selectively quoting from studies that are not, and do not claim to be, definitive statements on transport and the environment. I would never chastise Michael O’Leary for giving headline-grabbing quotes, but this issue is more important than soundbites will allow for. Every side, every player in this story, needs to come up with a much better argument for their cause, and we need to hear them.