The epidemic is regarding to be lifted, and many people are sharpening their knives and preparing to go abroad, but you know that even if everyone cannot go abroad during the epidemic, there are still tens of thousands of “unmanned” planes flying over Europe, like “ghost flights”.
This is not a horrific ghost story, but a spectacle of “ghost flights” created by EU regulations – so-called “ghost flights”, which are flights with no passengers, or only one or two passengers.
The average flight cost of a 2.5-hour short-haul flight is regarding US$12,000 per flight, including pilots, fuel costs, take-off inspections and other administrative processes, but why airlines would rather spend money in vain than keep the plane on time take off?
Answer: Because the competition for the right to use the airport is fierce. If the plane does not take off according to the time allocated by the airport, it will lose the right to use the airport, and the airline may have to cut off the route of the airport.
Taking Heathrow Airport, the world’s busiest airport, for example, there are 340,000 take-offs and landings in the first half of 2021, but the airport can only provide 290,000 use rights.
The right to use is adjusted every six months. If an airline performs well in the first half of the year – more than 80% of its flights take off and land on time, the company can keep the original use period unconditionally.
During the epidemic, the number of tourists plummeted. The EU announced that it would lower the 80% flight threshold to 50%. However, due to the improvement of the epidemic situation in April this year, the threshold was raised to 64%. It is expected that by the end of October this year, the 80% threshold will be restored.
Compared with the high threshold of the European Union, the United States has suspended the flight threshold regulations since March 2020, and will not resume until the end of October, so that airlines do not have to send ghost flights to retain the right to use.
Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association, warned in July last year that the EU’s high flight rates during the epidemic would cause environmental and financial havoc for the aviation industry.
According to Greenpeace estimates, there will be more than 100,000 ghost flights across Europe in the first half of this year, with carbon emissions equal to that of 1.4 million cars.
This is unbelievable for the EU, which has always advocated environmental protection and carbon reduction. Herwig Schuster, a spokesman for Greenpeace’s European transport group, once criticized: “The world is in the midst of a climate crisis. This senseless, highly polluting ghost flight is very contradictory to the EU’s environmental rhetoric!”
Why can’t the EU follow the example of the United States and cancel the flight rate regulations during the epidemic? There are two possible reasons: First, EU countries have different regulations on flight rate restrictions, and it takes too much time to coordinate and unify them.
Second, because the flight is from country A to the airport in country B, as long as the regulations of A and B are different, the airline still has to send a flight to protect itself.
Moreover, airplanes are still high-carbon vehicles. Sweden even has a special word “flygskam (flying shame)” to describe the shame of taking a high-carbon plane.
According to the “Guardian” report, regarding half of the distances in Europe are short-haul flights of less than 1,500 kilometers; compared with trains of the same journey, the carbon emissions are as high as 19 times.
In an effort to reduce carbon emissions, an Oxford University poll found that more than two-thirds of Europeans would switch from short-haul planes to trains. Before the epidemic, there was even a wave of “train tourism” in Europe, which unexpectedly brought a lot of benefits to the railway industry. OBB, Europe’s largest railway company, saw a 10% increase in its peak season performance in 2018. Last year coincided with the European Year of Railways, Belgium launched the “Europe Express”, which can circumnavigate the whole of Europe. Railway operators in various countries are also actively restoring long-distance night trains. This year, more new routes have been added, including France and Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland, and Germany and Vienna.
The European Union has also set a target of at least 160 kilometers for core railways by 2040, and EU Vice President Frans Timmermans has also expressed consideration for reducing the value-added tax on trains. With the assistance of lowering fares and increasing speed, the EU hopes to double the volume of high-speed rail transport by 2030 and triple it by 2050.
Taiwan is surrounded by sea on all sides, and you can only rely on planes to travel abroad. However, if you choose trains or buses for short-distance travel in tourist destinations, in addition to environmental protection, when the train passes through a foreign city, the scenery outside the window may add to the travel style.
(Author: Yang Naizheng; this article is published by “Business weekly“Reprinted with permission; source of the first picture:pixabay）
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