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- Hacker News
- 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.
by Wildgoose - Yes, we need to shut down the power plants. People lived without electricity for millions of years, they can always get back to it. /sby noosphr
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
by kilroy123 - 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.by datakan
- > 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.
by collabs - 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.
by richwater - 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.
- The new Airbus Project Sunrise aircraft also set the record for longest passenger aircraft flightby richwater
- 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.
- 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.by kbart
- 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.
by leaves83829 - 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.”by profeaturr
- More people, more flights.by HDBaseT
- 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 underby caycep
- 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.
by epolanski - Yes let's continue burning fuel. It's fine.by bestouff
- 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.
- Even hot air balloons burn fuel....How do you propose we cross great distances: horse, sailboat, or walk?by sleepyguy
- 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 healthby iso1631
- 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".
by Findecanor - Here is a good list of 'fuel per seat (in mpg)' numbers for various airplane configurations and flight durations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#Examp...
The total average across the industry in 2018 was between 67 and 81 mpg. Modern planes are in the 100-120mpg range.
by ortusdux - 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.
by melling - 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.by K0nserv
- This feels like one of those cases where it’s safe to say “history” instead of “recorded history.”by addaon
- 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.by sandworm101
- Even history is not safe if you consider the entire universe.by amelius
- 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?by rob74