Greater than 5,000 utterly empty passenger flights have flown to or from UK airports since 2019, the Guardian can reveal.
An additional 35,000 industrial flights have operated nearly empty since 2019, with fewer than 10% of seats stuffed, in response to evaluation of information from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). This makes a complete of about 40,000 “ghost flights”.
In a single quarter, for instance, 62 empty planes left Luton airport for Poland, whereas in one other, Heathrow noticed 663 nearly empty flights going to and from the US. Each quarters have been in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Air journey leads to extra carbon emissions an hour than every other shopper exercise and is dominated by a minority of frequent flyers, making it a spotlight of local weather campaigners. They known as the ghost flight revelations “surprising” and stated a jet gas tax was wanted and airport growth plans must be questioned. The UK authorities describes ghost flights as “environmentally damaging”.
Why ghost flights function stays unclear. Solely airways know the explanations however they don't publish information that explains the apply. Ghost flights might run to fulfil “use-it-or-lose-it” airport slot guidelines, although these have been suspended in the course of the top of the pandemic. Different causes cited by airways embody Covid repatriation flights or the repositioning of plane. However these can't be verified and campaigners stated extra transparency was wanted.
The brand new information provides the fullest image thus far of the variety of UK ghost flights, as earlier information solely counted worldwide departures. It now consists of worldwide arrivals and flights throughout the UK. The CAA will now publish this information quarterly, on account of a collection of FoI requests by the Guardian.
“Publication of this information is a step in the suitable course, however we'd like extra transparency to know why these inefficient, polluting practices proceed, and to carry the principle airline culprits to account,” stated Tim Johnson on the Aviation Setting Federation. “Given the local weather emergency, the revelation that so many close to empty planes have been burning fossil fuels and including to the CO2 increase within the ambiance is fairly surprising.”
A spokesperson for the Division for Transport stated it might work with the CAA to observe plane occupancy and search larger transparency on the problem of ghost flights.
The information reveals a mean of 130 utterly empty flights a month since 2019. The variety of empty flights remained at an identical stage earlier than, throughout and after pandemic journey restrictions, with the second highest stage within the second quarter of 2022. This implies the explanation the airways selected to fly empty planes was not associated to the affect of Covid on aviation.
Half of the empty flights have been throughout the UK and the highest seven airports accounted for two-thirds of the entire, led by Birmingham with 1,455, Luton (1,307) and Bristol (758). The variety of empty flights didn't correlate with the entire variety of flights at every airport, suggesting they could mirror points on particular routes.
There have been a mean of 1,200 nearly empty ghost flights a month for the reason that begin of 2020, when numbers jumped firstly of the Covid pandemic. Most of those – about 80% – have been to or from international locations.
Eight airports, among the many busiest within the UK, accounted for about two-thirds of the just about empty flights since 2019, led by Heathrow (10,467), Manchester (3,309), Gatwick (2,766) and Stansted (2,197). Edinburgh and Glasgow each had greater than 1,500 nearly empty flights.
Alethea Warrington, on the local weather charity Doable, stated: “This surprising new information on ghost flights is one more instance of how the aviation trade can't be trusted to get its emissions on monitor to sort out the local weather disaster.”
“Following a summer time of record-breaking, runway-melting warmth, this wanton waste of carbon by airways flies within the face of these feeling the complete brunt of our warming world,” she stated. “To finish this for good, it’s time to start out taxing kerosene to discourage pointless emissions.”
A spokesperson for Airways UK stated: “Tens of millions of flights arrived and departed the UK between 2019 and 2022, with solely a tiny fraction working with or without few passengers and for a wide range of operational causes pushed by the pandemic.”
Airways have denied working ghost flights to retain slots. The traditional 80:20 rule, which means 80% of flights on a route should function to retain the dear slots, solely applies to the busiest airports and was suspended from the top of March 2020 due to the pandemic. It was reintroduced as a 50:50 rule in October 2021 and rose to 70:30 from the top of March 2022.
Some airways have stated that some ghost flights happened in the course of the pandemic to fly in Covid-related provides on passenger planes. Nonetheless, the CAA information data fewer than 300 flights for the reason that begin of 2020 carrying cargo however no passengers.
A spokesperson for Birmingham airport stated: “Flight occupancy fell in the course of the pandemic attributable to journey restrictions. Throughout this time flights into Birmingham included British nationals getting back from ‘pink listing’ nations, PPE and Afghan refugees.”
A Luton airport spokesperson stated the explanations for the excessive variety of ghost flights included Covid journey restrictions and regulatory necessities concerning plane airworthiness and pilot licensing. “Following the elimination of all journey restrictions, common passenger hundreds per flight have returned to 88% this summer time,” he stated. Repositioning of plane and upkeep was among the many causes given by Bristol airport for its ghost flights.
Heathrow is the UK’s busiest airport and had the best variety of nearly empty flights. A Heathrow spokesperson stated: “At a time [during the pandemic] when the trade was shedding billions, no operator would have been flying a airplane with out it being commercially viable or with out an operational want. As borders closed to passengers, airways switched to cargo operations, delivering very important medical provides for the nation.”
Anna Hughes, on the Flight Free UK marketing campaign group, stated: “Placing tens of 1000's of empty or near-empty planes within the air throughout a local weather disaster is an enormous waste of cash and a useless supply of emissions. It makes a mockery of individuals’s efforts to scale back their very own emissions. If it makes enterprise sense for the airways to do that, there’s one thing badly fallacious with the enterprise mannequin.”
The spokesperson for Airways UK stated: “UK airways are absolutely dedicated to reaching internet zero emissions by 2050. Alongside filling our flights as a lot as attainable, we're making ‘jet zero’ a actuality by modernising our airspace to additional cut back inefficiencies, utilizing at the very least 10% sustainable aviation gas by 2030 and driving the event of zero emission industrial plane.”
Johnson stated: “A number of causes have been put ahead for close to empty flights in the course of the pandemic, however the provision of 2019 information – a document yr for airport passengers within the UK – highlights a wider drawback. The information additionally reveals that fifty,000 plane arrived or departed from Heathrow and Gatwick alone in 2019 lower than half full. This should forged doubt each on these airports’ claims that they're successfully full and must develop and on their claims to be responding to the urgency of the local weather problem.”
All of the flights within the CAA information are industrial passenger flights and air crew coaching flights aren't included. There have been 1000's of ghost flights to grease rigs however these weren't included within the Guardian evaluation. The CAA information additionally lists Bournemouth airport as having 933 empty flights, however the airport stated the overwhelming majority of those have been non-commercial flights run by an organization that could be a tenant on the airport.
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