If not flying, then what?

June 16, 2008

I’m putting this together somewhere Greg Principato - ACI-NA Presidentover the Atlantic on the way to the ACI Europe meeting in Paris. The plane is mostly full. Some business travelers, some vacationers, some visiting family and some students. More than 200 people. This is a scene that is being replicated all over the skies across the Atlantic.

When I got to Paris, I saw planes from all over the world, all full of the same kind of people I saw on my flight.

As I’ve noted before, some think air travel is a bad thing and that it degrades the environment. But when you think of the other ways that are possible to send people a long distance, they seem woefully inadequate. Would we fill the seas with ships to move those people? There is really no alternative.

That’s why the strong environmental record of aviation is so important. There is simply no way to move so many people such distances with anything like the efficiency of aviation. That will be a major topic at the ACI Europe meeting, along with the current plight of the airlines, about which more in future posts.

Back to the people on my plane. Perhaps those who feel aviation should be curtailed should walk down the aisle and identify those they don’t believe should fly. I wonder what they’d say…..


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