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Flybe problems - did they take rail improvements into account?

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Djgr

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So we travel slower whilst the rest of the world travels faster. Not a recipe for economic success i`m afraid. This country is not that efficient as it stands without going slower.
Even third world countries such as Morocco are now building high speed lines !

Isn't climate change a real pest then? Unless sustainability is tackled then you can wave goodbye to meaningful economic growth
 
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class26

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Isn't climate change a real pest then? Unless sustainability is tackled then you can wave goodbye to meaningful economic growth

Yes but our rails system is full. If HS2 isn`t built or something similar (and tinkering at the edges will not give the passenger uplift anything like HS2) then we will be forced into our cars on an already jammed motorway system. Sitting in traffic jams belching out co2 isn`t exactly environmentally friendly. HS2 is a far better bet from this perspective I would have thought.
 

edwin_m

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Improving the rail links would help the bigger cities on the way, such as Exeter and Plymouth. As mentioned before if it helps Newquay it would help the West Country incidentally.
Indeed it would. But the number of passengers on Newquay flights are such a tiny proportion of the capacity of a high speed line that the benefit of carrying them would be similarly tiny. Including or excluding this group isn't going to make any difference to whether the line is worth building, or whether to make it longer to serve Newquay directly when new infrastructure further east would benefit Newquay-London journeys and also many others.
 

devonexpress

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Untrue. Airlines pay no fuel duty or VAT on aviation fuel. The current price of Jet A1 is about 64p/l, less than half the price of diesel after duty and VAT. http://aiglle.co.uk/fuel-prices/ This is a massive subsidy to domestic airline services, relative to rail and road. Fuel is a high proportion of an airline's costs.
Well that's a lie. I think i'm just going to not post on here for a bit, to many big headed know it alls.
 

furnessvale

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Well that's a lie. I think i'm just going to not post on here for a bit, to many big headed know it alls.
I looked in vain for any evidence that airlines in the UK pay any excise duty or VAT on fuel.

I found plenty that, while rail can use rebated fuel not being on a road, it still pays in excess of 10p per litre excise duty, a not inconsequential amount given the millions of litres consumed annually.
 

Greybeard33

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Air Passenger Duty (APD) was intended to compensate, to some extent, for the lack of taxation on aviation fuel. However, reportedly the Government is giving Flybe a "holiday" from APD payments as part of the rescue deal.
 

LNW-GW Joint

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Well that's a lie. I think i'm just going to not post on here for a bit, to many big headed know it alls.

Quoting from a recent House of Commons briefing paper on taxing aviation fuel: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN00523/SN00523.pdf
At present, although road fuel is charged excise duty, which represents a substantial proportion of the pump price paid by motorists, aviation kerosene (AVTUR) which is used in jet engines is exempt from tax.
Many commentators have argued that this is an indefensible anomaly, given that aviation accounts for a growing share of greenhouse gas emissions. However, there are several obstacles to taxing aviation fuel.
First, it is probable that unilateral moves by the UK to impose duty on this category of fuel would be contrary to EU law.
Second, it is likely that even an EU-wide agreement on taxing this fuel would have a limited effect. Imposing duty on all flights - not just domestic ones within the EU - would pose the threat of ‘tankering’ – that is, carriers filling their aircraft as full as possible whenever they landed outside the EU to avoid paying tax, and so increasing the level of aviation emissions.
Finally, the tax-exemption of aviation fuel is subject to long-standing international agreements, and although there have been some discussion as to the case for amending these, progress has been very slow
 

InOban

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It's a subsidy to international trade and travel that ships and aircraft pay very little tax on their fuel.
 

Bletchleyite

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It's a subsidy to international trade and travel that ships and aircraft pay very little tax on their fuel.

Which is a bad thing. Shipping stuff half way round the world (and ships are some of the worst polluters) when it could be produced locally instead is to be deprecated. Unless of course we could see a resurgence of sail?
 

BigCj34

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Indeed it would. But the number of passengers on Newquay flights are such a tiny proportion of the capacity of a high speed line that the benefit of carrying them would be similarly tiny. Including or excluding this group isn't going to make any difference to whether the line is worth building, or whether to make it longer to serve Newquay directly when new infrastructure further east would benefit Newquay-London journeys and also many others.

I was meaning that, infrastructure improvements that benefit the bigger cities on the way help Newquay. I'm not suggesting any new high speed line needs to be built (presumably there is no capacity constraint unlike the WCML) but there could be room for upgrades on the existing lines to improve journey times.
 

furnessvale

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It's a subsidy to international trade and travel that ships and aircraft pay very little tax on their fuel.
Not really. It is the simple fear by all governments that to unilaterally impose a tax would drive traffic to an adjacent country.

This was the thinking behind the SNPs idea of abolishing APD in Scotland. Nothing to do with increasing Scottish trade per se, but everything to do with abstracting long distance traffic from the adjacent rUK.
 
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InOban

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I think that there's an international treaty which makes it illegal.
 

The Ham

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IET's can serve Newquay, but the line speed is limited no how good the acceleration is. Unless the railway has billions pumped into it then nothing is going to change. In my view, flying has got to be a whole lot better and greener than building High Speed rail lines all over the country and destroying the last of the greenbelt left.

If you look at the land take for Heathrow Airport it's 1,227ha with about 39 million passenger departures a year (78 million passengers). That works out at 31,785 passengers per Hectare.

Now if you look at the land ownership it's 52,000ha with about 1.8 billion departures. That works out at 34,615 passengers per Hectare.

As such, even with the very lightly used branch lines, it would appear that general rail beats Heathrow in terms of capacity for land use.

Now given that HS rail isn't going to have those rural branch lines dragging the numbers down then the efficiency of it compared to air travel is likely to be significant. That's on a surface travel mode vs flying where there vast majority of travel is done whilst not in contact with the ground or interfacing with anything built on the ground.
 

InOban

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In particular, shipping needs an incentive to pack in burning bunk oil.
I believe it now is banned, since the start of the year. I'm sure someone else will know.
 

BigCj34

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If you look at the land take for Heathrow Airport it's 1,227ha with about 39 million passenger departures a year (78 million passengers). That works out at 31,785 passengers per Hectare.

Now if you look at the land ownership it's 52,000ha with about 1.8 billion departures. That works out at 34,615 passengers per Hectare.

As such, even with the very lightly used branch lines, it would appear that general rail beats Heathrow in terms of capacity for land use.

Now given that HS rail isn't going to have those rural branch lines dragging the numbers down then the efficiency of it compared to air travel is likely to be significant. That's on a surface travel mode vs flying where there vast majority of travel is done whilst not in contact with the ground or interfacing with anything built on the ground.
So if there is more land infrastructure with aviation (plus let's not access roads and railways), which genuinely costs more to operate per passenger? Is rail still higher?
 

The Ham

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How is it misplaced? The Q400 is one of the most efficient turboprops in the world, in comparison to a similar sized jet it's on par with an eco friendly car per passenger basis. This is what gets me really angry, Idiot's claiming aviation causes massive global warming, and saying it should reduce its carbon footprint and be more fuel efficient, yet airlines have the biggest incentive to anyway, FUEL COST. Jet A1 is massively more expensive than the diesel you can fill your car up with, most airlines only use what is required for the journey plus an extra amount for safety. No airline runs around with full tanks unless its needed (this saves massive amount of fuel and thus pollution). Most airlines are upgrading fleets to reduce fuel bills for more environmentally friendly efficient aircraft. If electric aircraft where possible airlines would already be buying them, but the technology is not there yet and even if it was, it would still have to be proven to be safe.

To be perfectly honest, if train & bus companies and car users copied more how airlines work, there would be quite a considerable difference. I'm not saying airlines are perfect with roses, but I'm saying the days of aircraft burning fuel for the fun of it, 707, Concorde etc are long gone, why do you think the A380's are already being retired even though they only nearly 15 years old.

Even with an aircraft which is comparable to cars that's still higher than rail travel.

What are your sources for how any aircraft is comparable to a car in terms of CO2e emissions?

Then how does that compare to rail?

Then how does air travel continue to improve, bearing in mind that significant numbers of rail passengers are carried by EMU's which are powered by a rapidly greening power generation system?

Even then rail is significantly higher than walking/cycling.

The problem is that with a growing population (either at a local level within the UK or worldwide) that to stand still on emissions we've got to:
a) travel less
b) travel using much greener modes of travel
c) reduce the emissions of the travel which we are doing
d) carbon offsetting
e) mix of the above

Rail does well on b and c and can even be part of the answer with a. In comparison air travel does badly on all options, with the possible exception of d.

However carbon offsetting generally only works where there's easy wins in terms of helping others cut their emissions, as time goes on that's going to get harder (read more expensive) to do. As such it's likely to be a short term option.

Since 1990 what had the emissions of the UK done and how has aviation contributed to this?

From what's generally available it would appear that UK emissions have fallen, however aviation's emissions have doubled (i.e. the fall would have been much bigger if we weren't flying as much). Unless there's information which can be cited and ideally sources provided which provides evidence which is different to this.

The evidence for aviation's emissions doubling is from here (p9 of the PDF, P8 as labeled on the pages):
https://assets.publishing.service.g...ta/file/787488/tsgb-2018-report-summaries.pdf
 

The Ham

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So if there is more land infrastructure with aviation (plus let's not access roads and railways), which genuinely costs more to operate per passenger? Is rail still higher?

The cost to operate rail/air is going to be a difficult one to find an answer for. The big advantage airports have over the rail network is that if someone needs to cut the grass is all very local to where they are. If there's a problem with the railways the distance required to travel to go and fix something can be quite big.

However the fact that some railway land can be little more than scrub, whilst airports need to be much more controlled landscaping would compensate for some of that difference.
 

jkkne

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Flybe is relatively unique in that it serves a lot of places that simply aren’t feasible to take the train between. Unlike BA it doesn’t have a transit model to follow and easyJet tends to focus on major cities.

I guess it depends where you’re based and where you’re travelling for the train to work for you. Certainly I now prefer the train to London over BA but that’s a one off case as it’s the only place that Newcastle has a decent connection to (aside Edi and Glasgow)

I commute a lot between Newcastle and Cardiff and Southampton. As much as I’d love to spend 11 hours return on a Cross Country train no amount of flight shaming will keep me from boarding that jetstream plane.

hell if there was a Newcastle to Manchester flight I’d take it versus nigh on 3 hours each with TPE.
 

Bletchleyite

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edwin_m

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Bletchleyite

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Interesting thought that implicit subsidies for long-haul flights and shipping must act to some degree as an incentive for "offshoring" in preference to keeping work local.

Less so for clerical offshoring I would think. What needs to heavily reduce is (a) food miles (if we can produce it in the quantities required we should not import it, and we should only import what we cannot produce), and (b) product miles (again, manufacture locally). I reckon you could take half those ships out of the sea in a stroke.
 

edwin_m

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Less so for clerical offshoring I would think. What needs to heavily reduce is (a) food miles (if we can produce it in the quantities required we should not import it, and we should only import what we cannot produce), and (b) product miles (again, manufacture locally). I reckon you could take half those ships out of the sea in a stroke.
I don't know how realistic it is to bring manufacturing back from China in large quantities and Brexiters appear to assume that we should trade with more distant partners instead of those closer to home. But removing any unfair subsidy has got to be a good thing. Offshoring of clerical work does require some personal contact - a relative used to work in the web team for a retailer and it seemed to need quite a bit of visiting to and from the country where the "grunt work" was done.

But unless we expect Flybe to save itself by offering flights in small turboprops to little-known Chinese cities, this is getting well off-topic...
 

modernrail

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I had some chats with some folks over the weekend that suggested we are closer to short haul electric flights than we think. Possibly also hydrogen.

The Flybe network is the perfect first network for an electric fleet. It is not quite time yet but let's say we can accelerate development through designating it a priority sector and offering support to development.

It has to be said that IF electric/hydrogen flights can be made to work, as much as I love using the train, there is a massive argument to say this would be a great thing for regional connectivity. The cross country rail network and stock is poor. Even with better, longer trains, journey times from say Cardiff to Newcastle are always going to be poor. Environmentally and economically, a domestic electric flight network would be very interesting indeed.

One of those I spoke to also said they should put a planning condition on the new runway/terminal at Heathrow that it is electric only. Interesting thought.
 

JamesT

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Less so for clerical offshoring I would think. What needs to heavily reduce is (a) food miles (if we can produce it in the quantities required we should not import it, and we should only import what we cannot produce), and (b) product miles (again, manufacture locally). I reckon you could take half those ships out of the sea in a stroke.

Food miles is an overly simplistic measure. Depending on the methods of production, food shipped in from overseas can actually be greener than that produced locally. The stereotypical example is things like tomatoes where they require a heated greenhouse in our climate, but can be grown naturally elsewhere. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/mar/23/food.ethicalliving
 

edwin_m

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I had some chats with some folks over the weekend that suggested we are closer to short haul electric flights than we think. Possibly also hydrogen.

The Flybe network is the perfect first network for an electric fleet. It is not quite time yet but let's say we can accelerate development through designating it a priority sector and offering support to development.

It has to be said that IF electric/hydrogen flights can be made to work, as much as I love using the train, there is a massive argument to say this would be a great thing for regional connectivity. The cross country rail network and stock is poor. Even with better, longer trains, journey times from say Cardiff to Newcastle are always going to be poor. Environmentally and economically, a domestic electric flight network would be very interesting indeed.

One of those I spoke to also said they should put a planning condition on the new runway/terminal at Heathrow that it is electric only. Interesting thought.
Something like the various Scottish island flights could be an early application for electric aircraft, as they are short and the Scottish government could make the subsidy conditional on zero emissions.

For wider application I think the question is how many people actually travel between Newquay and Edinburgh (or their respective surroundings) and similar routes, and currently either fly or use the train. My hunch is not many more do than the aircraft capacity currently provided - after all Flybe is quicker and often cheaper than the train today, and there's no reason they couldn't run more or larger flights tomorrow if the demand was there. Most of the people on CrossCountry will be making shorter journeys where air isn't a good alternative because there is no convenient airport and/or the extra time to/from/in the airport cancels out the saving when in the air. Whatever their power source aircraft will also be limited by capacity of runways and air corridors particularly in the South East, as well as concerns about noise and possibly energy consumption even if electric.
 
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