Only One Way to Cut Emissions?

The Australian Transport Minister Mark Vaile must have been around a few holding patterns in his frequent flights to the federal capital Canberra from his electorate of Lyne, located on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales. He's been holding forth on the subject of airplanes wasting his valuable time of late. Mr Vaile told parliament the aviation sector could make practical changes to reduce its emission levels. Quite reasonably, he claimed that "planes forced to hold at low altitude burned four to five times as much fuel as planes en route at height; and much more than a plane holding while on the ground".

"How often have you traveled and arrived over your destination only to be put in a holding pattern?" Mr Vaile asked the lower house. Airlines had already introduced flex tracks, a way for international carriers to identify routes that took advantage of weather conditions and wind velocity to reduce flying time and emissions, Mr Vaile said. On a recent flight from Melbourne to Dubai, a crew saved 10 minutes and burned 2.7 tonnes less fuel by identifying a better wind-supported route of flight, which ultimately prevented an extra 8.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions being spewed into the atmosphere, Mr Vaile claimed. He was commenting upon a claim by Airservices Australia chief executive Greg Russell. The ATC Chief had said in a widely reported mea culpa statement, that their air traffic controllers had to address emissions now or risk having harsh restrictions imposed on them. IATA (The International Air Transport Association) has estimated that fuel consumption is cut by an average of 62 litres and carbon dioxide by 160kg for every minute of flying time saved by a long-haul airliner.

An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has estimated a 12 per cent inefficiency exists in air-traffic management globally, producing an extra 73 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and costing $US13.5 billion ($17.28 billion). But what exactly causes the majority of these holding patterns? Is it just inefficient ATC or also a lack of concrete to land on, combined with politically motivated movement caps (80 an hour) and airport runway noise sharing plans. Once the beancounters fall out of love with 'hub and spoke' we may see an improvement...or when pax want, or are happy, to arrive and depart at times other than 0600LT. Until then the airlines will continue to deal with the hand they're dealt...that is everyone arriving at once and departing at once - but relatively not a lot happening for the remainder of the day. Traffic schedules' peaks and troughs auto-generate the holding patterns.

Once again we are see everything that moves being blamed for a completely natural phenomena...Global Warming is not caused by man made CO2 emissions....increased atmospheric CO2 is caused by Global Warming, not the other way around; that's the alternate proposition anyway. The EU is moving to tackle aviation emissions by its proposed inclusion of airlines in its carbon trading scheme, forcing them to pay if they exceed their current level of emissions. However a closer examination of IPCC claims discloses that their scientists admit they have no idea what, if any, contribution airplane jet exhaust makes. The 'estimate', (read pure guess) is .06%. That's hardly enough to smoke a red herring.