American Airlines flies from Chicago to London ... with five passengers on board
Photo by Dyobmit. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.
Airplane travel is getting more expensive, and one of the reasons is the rising cost of the fuel. If you're American Airlines, one apparently viable option is to burn 22,000 gallons of fuel to fly five passengers from Chicago to London. A trip like that can't be good for AA's business, and it certainly isn't good for the earth.
The incident happened in early February following the cancellation of one of AA's regular Chicago-London flights. Somehow, American workers were able to rebook everyone from the canceled flight. Except for five people, who were then put into business class and sent across the pond. Were travel vouchers and some free lunch coupons not good enough for these five folks? Sheesh. What I don't understand is, if you're adding a flight to the schedule, why not get all those rebooked travelers on board?
The plane used was a Boeing 777, which Wikipedia says can carry between 283 and 368 passengers. THe environmental group Friends of the Earth called the trip an "obscene waste of fuel," which I doubt anyone can disagree with. 22,000 gallons for five people? C'mon.
UPDATE: The Huffington Post story where I read about this incident forgot to include this information: the airplane needed to be in London anyway, in order to fly passengers to the U.S. I'm familiar enough with the airline industry to know that sometimes planes need to be moved to where they're needed even without passengers. It's a wasteful, but necessary, part of the business. The HuffPo made it sound like AA sent the five people over just because. An AA spokesperson told the Telegraph that this was not the case here. The HuffPo didn't mention this, and so I didn't either. My bad.
[Source: Telegraph
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Alex Nunez 2:13PM (3/06/2008)
Free business class upgrade and flying same-day = me getting on the plane, even if I'm by myself.
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Chris 2:29PM (3/06/2008)
Airlines do this all the time... It is called Dead Heading, basicly just a repositioning flight when a flight is cancled or there is maintenance problems withanother plane and the airplane is needed somewhere else...
So good for AA, they could have moved an empty plane but they put the stranded passengers on a repositioning flight... Service to the passangers and the plane ended up where it needed to be.
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Mike Z 2:52PM (3/06/2008)
This is a stupid story! If you read the full story, the Plane needed to be in the UK *ANYWAY* for a scheduled Flight Back to the USA--so the plane had fly to the UK otherwise they would have to cancel an entire planeful of people.
Delays happen, and sometimes airlines need to reposition planes without passengers for future flights, be happy five people were carried on board.
The quality of this blog is really going downhill with stupid, non-factual, nonsense crap like this.
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bigbenaugust 3:12PM (3/06/2008)
Hey, 5 passengers and cargo is better than 0 passengers and no cargo.
No one yet has mentioned the lucrative cargo that was probably in the underside of that 777. Back in the '70s and '80s, Eastern Airlines did this all the time (overnight flights with just a few people and a full cargo hold).
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GenWaylaid 3:48PM (3/06/2008)
If the flight was a planned deadhead, I'll bet the cargo hold was so full of dense, high-margin cargo (such as overnight mail) that the takeoff weight was exactly the same as a "fully loaded" passenger flight. Plus, wouldn't it be awesome to be on board that flight? Plenty of room to stretch out and you can split the drinks cart five ways!
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Scatter 4:04PM (3/06/2008)
Even with dead heading, they could still fill the thing up with passengers.
But BA did something much worse:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6441103.stm
Flying aircraft just to maintain slots? Pathetic.
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Wise Golden 5:00PM (3/06/2008)
Wow...what a shame. I'm working as hard as I can to save 500 gallons of fuel per year and this flight set me back 44 years. The Airline Industry uses 7% of the fuel in the United States and they have been untouched by the environmental/ oil security movement. They idle planes on the run way, fail to plan their flights properly and circle for hours. They need to get better. The 787 will help, but that's years off. They need to reinvent the way they think because I'm certain that with better planning, deadhead flights can be eliminated.
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Wildgoosechase73 5:06PM (3/06/2008)
It amazes me that the airline industry is unregulated for emissions and fuel economy. Considering the incredible amount of fuel wasted and CO2 produced while a plane parks on a runway. We are chasing down every 0.01% improvement in autos while ignoring easier and cheaper improvements elswhere.
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Mike Z 6:25PM (3/06/2008)
Considering that fuel is 30-40% of total operating costs for an airline right now, they have all the market incentive in the world to use less fuel. No gov't regulations needed.
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joe 7:30PM (3/06/2008)
I'm pretty sure that they loaded up the belly of the plane with air freight. Even still, they lost money on this flight
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D.M. 2:26AM (3/07/2008)
Even for conservationist groups, there is a need for due diligence in learning the basic facts pertinent to the issue. That process cannot be replaced by reflexive hyperbole.
For the Friends of the Earth to condemn an otherwise functional and economic imperative is quite ignorant. It casts a pallor of muck-raking sensationalism over an otherwise laudable effort.
I've been lurking on this blog for a while now; recently, I've seen the same errors in judgment. Don't let this place become a mouthpiece for groups that are prone to making fools of themselves.
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Alex 12:25PM (3/07/2008)
Huffington Report is hardly a credible source. I would take anything from a so proudly biased site as that with a grain of salt. That goes for the neo-con and fundie sites too, so all you bleeding hearts can pull your undeis out of your butt now and calm down.
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