This is how it works: Flights that never took off were called “ghost flights” in the early days of the pandemic. When demand for air travel suddenly dropped and international borders were closed, “ghost flights” became more common.
These planes had been empty or nearly empty when they were flying across the sky. Airline schedules had to keep up with their contractual obligations to fly. Almost two years later, they’re still lurking in the sky above us, and that’s not good.
A Greenpeace report says that more than 100,000 “ghost flights” will fly over European skies this winter, which is a lot. As many as 1.4 million cars make more than 1.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.
Greenpeace figures are based on an interview with Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr in December. Spohr told the interviewer that Lufthansa Group would have to fly 18,000 extra flights over the six-month winter season to keep its slots under European rules.
Greenpeace says that based on the fact that Lufthansa’s air visitors make up 17% of the European market, the full range of Europe’s ghost flights would emit 2.1 million tonnes of CO2.
The evaluation has caused a wave of shock. She said: “Brussels Airways [part of the Lufthansa group], which makes 3,000 pointless flights to keep airport slots, is part of the Lufthansa group.” In the UK, people started a petition asking the government to ground planes that were not being used.
Lufthansa, on the other hand, says it is doing its best to fill all of its planes, but was having a hard time balancing the chaos at Covid with the need to keep its slots.
A spokesman for the airline told CNN that “pointless flights” aren’t usually empty or “ghost” flights, but that’s not always true. “As a result of the pandemic, some flights might not be as full as they should be. Even though there isn’t a lot of interest in these flights, Lufthansa Group Airways still needs to run them to keep getting permission to take off and land at European hubs and major airports.”
As a result, Lufthansa says that its predictions for the coming season have been off so far. The Omicron variant is the reason, they say There have been more restrictions on where people can go and how sick they can get, says a spokesperson for the disaster. “Unexpectedly, this not only slowed down the previous pattern of restoration, but it also caused a big surge in demand.”
At the International Air Transport Association (IATA) annual meeting in October, the aviation industry said that by 2050, it would have no carbon emissions.
In a multi-way blame game, a lot of people are at odds over the ridiculous wastefulness of pointless flights. This includes hub-based airlines, low-cost airlines, regulators, and environmental groups.
“We’re in a climate disaster, and the transport sector is the fastest-growing source of pollution in the EU,” says Herwig Schuster, a spokesperson for Greenpeace’s “European Mobility for All” campaign. Pointless, polluting “ghost flights” are just the tip of the iceberg.
He says the EU would be irresponsible if it didn’t do things like stop ghost flights and stop short-haul flights where there is a cheap train connection.
So why are these Mary Celeste flights still going on, and what are aviation’s stakeholders doing to get out of the pink tape that has snagged the airways in this climate-damaging mess?
Treasured things
The reason airlines keep running these expensive flights is because the business is playing a high-stakes and profitable game of slots that is better than anything you’ll find in Las Vegas.
Even if people aren’t going, airlines still want to protect their slots: the time they have set aside on important routes.
Slots are a very valuable asset for airways. With more than 200 of the world’s busiest hubs working at full capacity, there isn’t enough space on the runways or inside the terminals for all the flights that people want to take.
To deal with this, the capacity of congested airports is broken down into slots. These are the ability to land, get fuel, get new passengers, and then take off again, all in a set and controlled amount of time.
Carriers then plan their schedules based mostly on how many slots are available at each end of the route. This is how they figure out their schedules To make the most money, the schedules need to match up with demand. Early morning slots for business travellers who want to make short-haul, same-day-return trips are very valuable.
It’s hard to make sure that both ends of your trip happen at the same time when the most interesting airports are full.
You might want to know that when you take off from one place, you can land at another at a certain time. Paul Steele, the head of the IATA, says that. We want a system that works together, so we don’t mess around with slot allocation at the beginning of the process.
That is where the Worldwide Airport Slot Pointers (WASG) can be found. A lot of people use this as a guide for how the world slot allocation process works. The Pointers, which were written by IATA, the Airports Council Worldwide, and the Worldwide Airport Coordinators Group, are meant to provide “transparency, flexibility, certainty, consistency, and sustainability… for the benefit of airways, airports, and customers.” This is what they want to achieve.
Lufthansa’s CEO says the group needs to run 18,000 unnecessary flights over the winter to keep its airport slots.
In this picture, Silas Stein is smiling.
a mind-boggling computer system
As a result, there are a lot of city-pair routes, and some are synchronised with connecting flights. It’s hard to keep track of, and the allocation has to be done twice a year for the summer and winter schedules.
A rule says that if an airline makes good use of its slot at least 80% of the time, it can keep it for the next season. This is called “grandfather rights,” and it’s a way for airlines to keep their slots.
There is little or no room in the community to add new routes, especially at congested airports. This is why slots are gold mud:
Heathrow Airport is one of the best places to land in the UK. A pair of early-morning slots cost about $19 million, then dropped to $13 million at noon and $6 million at night, according to a briefing paper from the UK House of Commons.
the chance to break files Oman Air, for example, is said to have paid $75 million for two takeoff and landing slots at Heathrow in early 2016. Paper: SAS Scandinavian Airlines sold two pairs of Heathrow slots to American Airlines in March 2017 for $75 million, it says. Airlines, on the other hand, often keep these contractual details secret.
Other ways to trade slots, like when carriers swap, are also possible. This is how soccer teams let players go on loan.
Grandfather rights mean that if airlines don’t use the slots as much, they could lose them. Slicing ability is putting the airways at risk of losing their slots, which means planes could still be used even if very few people are on them.
Getting rid of the pink tape
A few years ago, when the first effects of Covid wiped out most of the airline networks, the 80 percent rule was eased a little.
In the US, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) didn’t enforce slot utilisation because it had already done so in 2002, 2003, and 2009. This was because of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the USA; the outbreak of SARS; and the global financial crisis, respectively.
If you don’t use something, you have to give it back. In Europe, for the Winter 2021-2022 time period, this threshold was lowered to 50%. However, airlines are feeling more uncertain and want more room to keep their slots.
It says that “the current [Covid] situation should be better taken into account in the application of European laws so that airways can continue to adjust their supply to meet demand.”
The Group wants more flexibility “within the application of the drive majeure rules that allow for exceptions to the 50% slot utilisation rule.”
People’s travel plans have been ruined by the Omicron variant, so the European Commission has extended the slot aid rules until October 29, 2022, to deal with that. However, the Fee is raising its threshold to 64% in April.
Adina Vălean, the EU’s commissioner for transport, says that the progress made in vaccination campaigns and the EU Digital Covid-19 Certificates has helped boost traveller confidence and air connectivity in the EU. This has put the business in a better position to deal with short-term problems, she says. There is still a long way to go before regular airport slot management starts again next summer, even though we are not there yet.
Vălean says that the EU is keeping an eye on the situation. He says that Omicron still has an effect on airline bookings. “During the Covid-19 crisis, the Commission has shown that it is willing and able to act quickly when necessary, and this will continue to be the case in the coming months.”
Heathrow is the busiest airport in Britain.
It was taken by Peter Macdiarmid for Getty Photos Europe.
Pay it forward?
As one of Europe’s biggest low-cost carriers, they think ghost flights can be solved very quickly.
Michael O’Leary, the CEO of Ryanair, says that, “If Lufthansa really needs to run these flights (to keep these slots from going to other airlines) then they should be forced to sell these seats to the public at low prices.”
O’Leary is angry because Lufthansa and its subsidiary airways (Brussels Airways, Swiss, and Austrian) have gotten billions of dollars from the government in the past few years. Instead of running empty flights to keep slots, Lufthansa should put the seats on these flights on sale at low prices to thank the German and European taxpayers who have given it billions during the Covid disaster, he says.
Lufthansa’s spokesperson, on the other hand, says that bigger airlines are in a completely different situation. Low-cost airlines are more likely to fly out of smaller airports where there are usually more slots than community companies like Lufthansa Group, which are more likely to fly out of bigger cities where there are usually more slots.
If you don’t use something, you lose it. The exception to this rule is the “drive majeure” clause. However, this isn’t always seen the same way across Europe. Many countries don’t allow exceptions at all, or they only allow a few.
Making exceptions can also be a lot of work and take a lot of time. Every exception has to be approved on its own: for the place to start and the destination. This means that two approvals are always needed. Normally, approvals are given quickly before a flight, which means that there isn’t enough time for passengers to be re-booked.
Lufthansa wants all EU countries to be able to make exceptions to rules about when planes can take off and land. This way, Lufthansa says, the problem can be solved quickly, reducing the number of forms for the current winter schedule. “The EU Commission should push for uniform laws so that unnecessary flights don’t happen and airways can plan better,” says a spokesperson for the group.
Defend and fight.
ACI Europe, a group of airport operators that represents more than 500 airports in 55 countries, isn’t happy about the growing business and political talk about “ghost flights.” Doubt is also being cast on some of the main hub carriers’ claims that ghost flights can’t be stopped.
“Some airlines say they have to run a lot of empty flights in order to keep their rights to use airport space. There may be no reason why this must be the case “Olivier Jankovec, the director general of ACI Europe, says this.
In the current situation, he says, slot utilisation rules are trying to do two things: “to protect airways from the worst of unpredictability that is out of all our hands, and crucially, to also make sure that airport capacity is used in a competitive way.”
Jankovec says that finding a balance between economic viability and the need to keep important connectivity and protect against anti-competitive penalties is very difficult “We think that the European Commission did the right thing by this. Think about ghost flights and how they affect our environment, and it looks like you’re talking about something that doesn’t happen. Let’s keep going with the very important work of recovering and rebuilding together “In this case, I would say:
As an extra step, on February 2, IATA released a statement welcoming new guidance from the European Airport Coordinators Association, which is supposed to help make slot-use thresholds more consistent across airports. This is what the statement said:
Willie Walsh, IATA’s director general, said that such a move was important for “keeping important European air connectivity” and “levelling the playing field with jurisdictions that have recognised the need for full flexibility.”
That promise of flexibility can be very important in cutting down on empty flights. However, in the end, only when the public’s love of air travel is boosted by the eventual and full defeat of the Covid virus will they be completely eliminated.
Yas Viceroy Abu Dhabi Lodge in Abu Dhabi, UAE, in November 2015. Tom Gandolfini took this picture for AFP/Getty Images.
He is an aviation journalist who talks about how passengers will be able to travel in the future, as well as how they will be able to get around now. Watch him at @paulsillers.
