American Airlines Makes Trans-Atlantic Flight With Just Five Passengers
A stroke of good fortune for a small group of passengers has been called an outrage by environmental groups. An American Airlines flight from Chicago to London flew all the way across the Atlantic with only five passengers, giving each a lavish ride of a lifetime.
For deciding to operate the flight, American Airlines has faced heavy criticism from groups who have decried the wasteful carbon footprint for a flight with so few passengers. The flight used about 15,000 gallons of jet fuel -- 3,000 gallons per passenger -- for the nine-hour trip. Each passenger left a footprint of 35.77 tons of carbon dioxide, enough to drive an average car 100,000 miles.
"Flying virtually empty planes is an obscene waste of fuel. Through no fault of their own, each passenger's carbon footprint for this flight is about 45 times what it would have been if the plane had been full," Friends of the Earth's transport campaigner Richard Dyer said.
Because of a mechanical malfunction, AA flight 90 was 14 hours late leaving Chicago's O'Hare airport on February 8. Though most passengers made other arrangements to London, five passengers unable to be rebooked made the 4,000 mile flight in business class, with two crew members per passenger.
American Airlines said it chose to continue with the flight because of the full load of passengers waiting at London's Heathrow airport to return to the United States.
"With such a small passenger load we did consider whether we could cancel the flight and re-accommodate the five remaining passengers on other flights," says American Airlines' European spokesperson Anneliese Morris.
"However, this would have left a plane load of west-bound passengers stranded in London Heathrow who were due to fly to the U.S. on the same aircraft."
Morris was quick to point out that despite the staggeringly low passenger count, the flight did carry a full cargo load.
"We sought alternative flights for the west-bound passengers but heavy loads out of London meant that this was not possible. The only option was to operate the flight," Morris said.
"This put the aircraft in London Heathrow for the following day, enabling us to operate a full schedule and avoid further inconvenience to our passengers and cargo customers."
"Governments must stop granting the aviation industry the unfair privileges that allow this to happen by taxing aviation fuel and including emissions from aviation in international agreements to tackle climate change," Dyer said.
But despite these accusations, Kieran Daly, air transport intelligence editor for Flight International magazine, said the amount passengers carried was irrelevant.
"Airlines are still a business. The cargo had to be flown and perhaps some of it was time-sensitive," Daly said.
"It's just not practical for an airline to tell its customers that it won't fly until it has a full passenger load. Customers won't be happy and the airline will quickly be out of business."