Commercial airliners are only about half as efficient as other kinds of mass transit (busses, trains) in terms of fuel/mile/person, this isn’t the gotcha you think it is.
I suspect “domestic flights” in the UK are pretty different than the US (a brief search indicates the average flight is around 4 times longer in the US, and planes are far more efficient during the middle of their flight compared to the ends, but average passengers per flight is a little harder to find for both countries to properly figure that out)
Seems to check out compared to the average bus ride, though. And long distance busses are popular in a lot of countries (including Britain), because they’re often much cheaper than long distance trains.
That was my first reaction but then I thought about it a bit longer and realized that it’s not reasonable to compare a local bus ride that stops and starts every other junction, with a transatlantic flight.
The long distance buses are listed there at 27g, which is a shade over 1/10th of a domestic flight.
Commercial airliners are only about half as efficient as other kinds of mass transit (busses, trains) in terms of fuel/mile/person, this isn’t the gotcha you think it is.
where did you get those numbers? i call bullshit
https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint:
https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10311
https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/sustainability-indicators/carbon-footprint-factsheet
I suspect “domestic flights” in the UK are pretty different than the US (a brief search indicates the average flight is around 4 times longer in the US, and planes are far more efficient during the middle of their flight compared to the ends, but average passengers per flight is a little harder to find for both countries to properly figure that out)
Seems to check out compared to the average bus ride, though. And long distance busses are popular in a lot of countries (including Britain), because they’re often much cheaper than long distance trains.
That was my first reaction but then I thought about it a bit longer and realized that it’s not reasonable to compare a local bus ride that stops and starts every other junction, with a transatlantic flight.
The long distance buses are listed there at 27g, which is a shade over 1/10th of a domestic flight.
Huh, you’re right. I was looking at “Bus (average)”, thinking the regular local bus was represented by “Bus (local London)”.