How Eco-friendly is flying?

This last weekend I received a very interesting article from one of the newsletters I am subscribing to. It revolved around the release of the first Airbus A380 Super Jumbo Airplane to Qantas Airline, the Australian carrier.

Most of the article was telling the story about the plane and that Quantas was one of the first organizations to order it when the concept was still unproven.

What was interesting from a customer point of view was the description about the special layout that the airline had requested for the interior. You would think that they ordered this huge plane simply to put more passengers in on the same route. That was probably part of the reason.

The version that was released to Quatans actually only has 415 seats, which is still a huge number, but much less that the normal 550 and way less that the up to 750 the most crowded configuration could offer.

Time will tell if the concept of such a large plane really pays off or will be adopted by more and more airlines. The leaders of the airline were not just proud to get the “keys” to the first one of these jumbos, but they also made a claim that I thought was very interesting in light of the frequent claims we hear about flying.

I don’t know about you, but I have seen numerous interviews and opinion pieces on TV the last few years accusing people of flying when it would be more environmentally friendly to drive or take the train. That is probably true if one person flies alone or a very small group.

So what about the A380 Superjumbo? During the ceremony it was noted that the version for Quanta only uses 3 liters of fuel for every 100 kilometers flown. Naturally that is assuming that the plane is full.

I thought about that number and went to the conversion tables. Actually, this figure is equal to 78.39 Miles/Gallon. In that sense it is much better than any regular car I am aware of, and the plane is moving much faster  than any car would. In that sense it is clearly very eco-friendly to use the Quantas A380.

You might say: ”well, but no plane is completely full all the time”, and that is true. On the other hand, even 80% occupancy would still give you better than 60 mpg, and if anybody flies with the version that has more seats, the mpg goes even higher.

Overall the surprising answer to the question is: At least with the A380 it is eco-friendly to fly.

Axel Meierhoefer