What Are Europe’s Ghost Flights?

Table of Contents

With the decline in flights for business or pleasure due to the ongoing pandemic, airlines that are attempting to maintain market share are complaining about the ‘ghost flights’ they are being forced to fly.
An EU regulation that dates back to 1993 requires European airlines to maintain empty or near-empty flights just to retain their take-off and landing slots.

What is Ghost flight?

A ghost flight is a plane that flies from one airport to another without any, or with extremely few, passengers travelling in it.
A regulation of 1993 by European Union makes it mandatory to maintain near-empty flights just to retain their take-off and landing slots.
This has been done in order prevent the slots from being handed over to other airlines that can be competitors or new market entrants.
To secure their slots, airlines have to use up to 80 per cent of their slots. During pandemic, this was reduced to 50%.
Once the winters end in March, the slots percentage is set to be increased to 64. The main aim is for airline to prove that they still have adequate market share.
Essentially, airline operators have to prove that they have adequate market demand that justifies their holdings. According to the European Commission’s website, this ‘use it or lose it’ system is employed “to ensure that airlines have access to the busiest EU airports on the basis of principles of neutrality, transparency and non-discrimination.”
Greenpeace, a global network of independent campaigning organisations that promote solutions to global environmental problems, analysed that there were over 100,000 pointless ‘ghost flights’ in Europe that are causing climate damage equivalent to emissions from 1.4 million cars.
It is a reported fact that the aviation sector accounts for a considerable amount of carbon emissions worldwide. An analysis shows that taking a long-haul flight generates more carbon emissions than the average person in dozens of countries produces in a whole year.
According to Greenpeace’s analysis, ‘this number of flights causes climate damage equal to 2.1 million tonnes of CO2’ and other greenhouse gases.
This damage is equivalent to emissions from 4 million average petrol or diesel cars in a year.
Apart from the Lufthansa Group, no other airline has communicated their number of ghost flights.
The group estimated that they’ll be running around 18,000 empty flights alone, depending on their market share in Europe.
By the same logic, the total number of ghost flights in Europe could be over 100,000.

Greenpeace has called on the European Commission and national governments to end the regulation that requires the maintenance of ghost flights and to ban short-haul flights where there is an alternative train route within six hours.

Aviation and CO2 Emissions

Around 2.4% of global CO2 emissions come from aviation. Together with other gases and the water vapour trails produced by aircraft, the industry is responsible for around 5% of global warming.
At first glance, that might not seem like very big contribution. Except, only a very small percentage of the world flies frequently. Even in richer countries like the UK and the US, around half of people fly in any given year, and just 12-15% are frequent fliers.
Though there is no exact data, Dan Rutherford, shipping and aviation director at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), a US-based non-profit, estimates just 3% of the global population take regular flights.
In fact, if everyone in the world took just one long-haul flight per year, aircraft emissions would far exceed the US’s entire CO2 emissions, according to ICCT analysis.

A return flight from London to San Francisco emits around 5.5 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) per person – more than twice the emissions produced by a family car in a year, and about half of the average carbon footprint of someone living in Britain.
Even a return flight from London to Berlin emits around 0.6 tonnes CO2e – three times the emissions saved from a year of recycling.
And emissions from planes are rising rapidly – they increased by 32% between 2013 and 2018. While improving fuel efficiency is gradually reducing the emissions per passenger, it is not keeping up with the rapid increase in total passenger numbers, which are projected to double in the next 20 years.

Question:
Which airlines is set to be the first to use sustainable aviation fuel (SAF)?
[A] British Airways
[B] Air India
[C] Qantas
[D] Air Emirate