Just when you thought climate activists couldn't get nuttier, their latest idea is straight out of the clouds. While the Green New Deal called for banning airplanes, the new plan is just to slow them down. A report from the University of Cambridge on reducing carbon emissions in aviation includes several recommendations, most notably slower airplanes. According to the report, if flight speeds are reduced by 15 percent, fuel burn will decrease by 5 to 7 percent.
While it's true that going slower would burn less fuel, the report fails to address the myriad other problems this would cause, like increased costs, congestion, inconvenience for travelers, and loss of productivity for the air travel industry. "First of all, this would require redesigning planes to fly slower," says Mike Hatten, aviation consultant and former airline pilot. "Redesigning would cost millions of dollars per airplane...who's going to pay for those millions of dollars? The airlines, the government, and it's going to raise the cost of airplanes, so you can already see there's a problem there."
But that's only the first problem. At a time when airports are more crowded than ever, and air congestion is leading to near-collisions, this would only exacerbate the issue. In fact, slower planes could add 50 minutes to an average transatlantic flight. "By flying slower, you're going to have planes in the air longer...so congestion is going to get worse," says Hatten. "Couple that with the growth forecast for the airline industry, and I think for this particular time, it's not feasible."
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