News: Aviation pollution debate heats up

Flights > News > # 1329 (20/06/2007)

The battle between green groups and the travel industry over aviation's impact on the climate intensified yesterday.
Greenpeace campaigners handed out free train tickets to passengers taking domestic flights, meanwhile the UK’s biggest pilots’ union published a report claiming to debunk the widely held belief that air transport is the major cause of growing carbon dioxide emissions.
Environmentalists are targeting domestic plane journeys in particular, which they say could easily be switched to trains which emit less climate-warming CO2.
Greenpeace set up mock check-on desks at London City, Manchester, Newcastle and Edinburgh airports on Tuesday to offer passengers on British Airways domestic flights the chance to swap the return section of their plane ticket for a train ticket. Greenpeace tried a similar stunt when BA launched its new service from Gatwick to Newquay in March, but had little success in persuading passengers to swap the plane for the train.
Speaking at London City airport, Greenpeace director, John Sauven, said: "Planes are ten times more damaging to the climate than trains, so if we don't do something about the growth in aviation, Britain will find it very hard to meet its global warming targets," he added.
British Airways countered that it had led the industry over the last eight years in promoting carbon trading to limit aviation's impact on the environment, adding that the European Union planned to include aviation in its Emissions Trading Scheme from 2011.
A BA spokesman said: "There will be significant cost, so nobody can pretend this is an easy way out."
Greenpeace's action comes the day after the British Air Line Pilots Association published a report saying air travel had become a scapegoat for global warming and air passengers should stop feeling guilty. The report also uncovered evidence that shipping and some forms of rail travel were more polluting than aviation.
Last week Easyjet also unveiled plans for a short-haul aircraft that it hoped would generate 50% less carbon dioxide emissions than its current planes.
EasyJet chief executive, Andy Harrison, said travellers would continue to make domestic flights in Britain for as long as the country lacked an efficient high-speed rail network.