American flies five from Chicago to London, on a 777!

I've got a few environmental things I've been meaning to get to, and then I'll get back to the political stuff.

This one is from last week - an American Airlines Boeing 777 flew from Chicago to London with five passengers aboard. I certainly understand that the airlines have been hit with rising fuel costs, and that passengers have to pay extra to compensate for rising fuel costs. However, this incident goes above and beyond the call of stupidity. It's stories like this that anger me to no end. This is an example of how the consumer gets screwed - by airlines making idiotic, absurd decisions like this one. Makes it kind of hard to by sympathetic to the airlines for rising fuel costs. (Oh, and why the hell am I never on one of these flights? Nooo - of course not - I get the five-year old who's been up at the crack of dawn who likes to entertain himself by kicking my seat back for 1,000 miles. Whee.)

From The Telegraph (U.K.):

A major airline is under fire from environmentalists for flying an aircraft across the Atlantic with only five passengers on board.

The flight from Chicago to London meant that the plane, a Boeing 777, used 22,000 gallons of fuel.

It led to American Airlines being accused of reckless behavior by green lobby groups.

The latest "eco-scandal" flight took place on Feb. 9 after American was forced to cancel one of its four daily services from Chicago to London.

While it was able to find places for nearly all the passengers on the fully-booked flight, five still had to be accommodated. Those who did fly were upgraded to the business class cabin.

But while they enjoyed lavish hospitality, the airline was accused of an "obscene waste of fuel" by Friends of the Earth.

It is estimated that each passenger produced 43 tons of CO2 – consuming enough fuel to carry a Ford Mondeo around the world five times.

Operating the near empty flight is estimated as having cost American about £30,000. But a spokesman said it had no alternative.

"With such a small passenger load we did consider whether we could cancel the flight and re-accommodate the five remaining passengers on other flights.

"However, this would have left a plane load of west-bound passengers stranded in London Heathrow who were due to fly back to the US on the same aircraft.

"We sought alternative flights for the west-bound passengers but heavy loads out of London that day meant that this was not possible."

Richard Dyer, Friends of the Earth's transport campaigner said: "Flying virtually empty planes is an obscene waste of fuel. Through no fault of their own, each passenger's carbon footprint for this flight is about 45 times what it would have been if the plane had been full.

"Governments must stop granting the aviation industry the unfair privileges that allow this to happen by taxing aviation fuel and including emissions from aviation in international agreements to tackle climate change."

It's stories like this that motivate me to blog and try to make a nano-difference in the world.

I'm sure the airline was in a bind, and I'm trying to understand such a stupid story. Whenever there's a price increase, it seems like the customer, the flier, gets screwed. It's bad enough that United recently became the first, and no doubt the last airline to begin charging $25 for a second checked bag.

And today, a barrel of oil closed at $111. How soon do you think consumers are going to get lambasted for that development? Partly, that's understandable, but of course Wall Street still has to be happy with fat profits, and there are CEOs that need seven- and eight-figure salaries. Yet, American is carrying five people on a 777 from Chicago to London.

The best part about this story? The reaction to it. I originally found this story on Attytood, one of my favorite Philly blogs. The minute any environmental story is brought up, it takes neo-con artists about five seconds to bring up Al Gore. (Nevermind that the story about his electric bill has been thoroughly debunked - read about that Here.)

Bringing up how celebs, politicians and liberals fly on private jets doesn't take away from the outrage of this story. Incidentally, liberals aren't the only politicians who fly in private jets. Click Here to see how America's Profiteer Mayor demands a Gulfstream IV private jet or better for his speaking engagements. But, I guess to be fair, since he now has the popularity of Chlamydia, his demands may have to be tempered just a bit. Aww, poor baby. I'm sure he'll manage to get by.

And quite frankly, considering the experience of flying commercial these days - overbearing restrictions that aren't keeping us safe, availability of flights, breathtakingly rude TSA agents and all the rest, if I were lucky enough to be incredibly wealthy, you bet your ass I'd have a private jet. I'd make up the difference in my carbon footprint in dozens and dozens of other ways.

Oh, and by the way - Al Gore is probably still doing more for the environment than you are, and he damn well is doing more than our National Embarrassment, President Bush, who only recently even took the tremendously bold and courageous political step of acknowledging that humans are "contributing" to the climate crisis.

Thank God for small favors, Mr. President.