Virgin Wants To Tow Airplanes To The Runway
Posted by duncan, 1939 days ago
Link: http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1125... 
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Reading article "Virgin Wants To Tow Airplanes To The Runway" - Reply to this / 2 comment(s)
Richard Branson was on BBC Five Live this morning talking about his recent plans to go green in a big way. He made some interesting points, particularly around the harm caused by short flights from, for example, Birmingham to London, when there is an 'adequate' train service that takes a comparable amount of time. As the owner of both Virgin Air and Virgin Trains, he'd know I guess.
Anyway, during the interview he talked of a plan to tow aeroplanes to the runway, rather then having them taxi and queue for 10 or 20 minutes at a time - all whilst emitting CO2. If it's true, as George Monbiot suggests, that aeroplanes are about as efficient as we can make them, giving that they're not changed in the decades we've been using them, then cutting down on emissions outside of the flight seems like a very sensible idea. Creating this 'starting grid' for planes prior to take-off would cut CO2 emissions from 2% to 1.5% and would lower the pollution levels for those people who live closest to the airports.
The real question is one of belief - talking green is a real winner at the moment, hence David Cameron and the Tory party here in the UK giving significant exposure to their 'green' credentials. However, the real test is five years from now - will Virgin still be green?
You can listen to a snippet of the interview below:
Richard Branson was on BBC Five Live this morning talking about his recent plans to go green in a big way. He made some interesting points, particularly around the harm caused by short flights from, for example, Birmingham to London, when there is an 'adequate' train service that takes a comparable amount of time. As the owner of both Virgin Air and Virgin Trains, he'd know I guess.
Anyway, during the interview he talked of a plan to tow aeroplanes to the runway, rather then having them taxi and queue for 10 or 20 minutes at a time - all whilst emitting CO2. If it's true, as George Monbiot suggests, that aeroplanes are about as efficient as we can make them, giving that they're not changed in the decades we've been using them, then cutting down on emissions outside of the flight seems like a very sensible idea. Creating this 'starting grid' for planes prior to take-off would cut CO2 emissions from 2% to 1.5% and would lower the pollution levels for those people who live closest to the airports.
The real question is one of belief - talking green is a real winner at the moment, hence David Cameron and the Tory party here in the UK giving significant exposure to their 'green' credentials. However, the real test is five years from now - will Virgin still be green?
You can listen to a snippet of the interview below:
http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1125...
Comments
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There's an interesting 'CO2 and Airplanes' post over on the Conservation Finance blog. In short, it seems that the contrails created by airplanes is creating a layer of thin cloud that suppresses the effect of global warming by "trapping heat below at night and reflecting the sun’s rays during the day". Read the full article here: http://conservationfinance.wordpress.com/2006/0...
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according to the article, it's 80-90 minutes of waiting time at JFK... that's crazy! Surely better planning would prevent this from being necessary. I know it's a large airport, but the waste incurred by this of both fuel and time of passengers adn crew... I'm sure that the passengers would be much happier if the scheduling was improved so that this wait didn't happen anywhere.
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