United, Southwest and Delta have announced they will be reducing flights amid continuing government shutdown
United, Southwest and Delta airlines began cancelling flights for Friday in compliance with the Federal Aviation Administration’s directive that will see reductions in flights at 40 major airports from Friday to help address air traffic controller shortage safety concerns as a result of the government shutdown.
The Associated Press published the list after airline regulators identified “high-volume markets” where the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says air traffic must be reduced by 4% by 6am ET on Friday, a move that would force airlines to cancel thousands of flights and create a cascade of scheduling issues and delays at some of the nation’s largest airports. The FAA is also imposing restrictions on space launches but not imposing any cuts on international flights.
Accidentally slowing down global warming.
Or is it? I don’t even know. Not if they all drive instead.
Remember all sorts of wildlife coming out to play during Covid? That was nice.
2 people in a car is always more efficient than flying in terms of global warming potential I think. A long haul flight has similar GWP/km to driving 1 person. Shorter flights are worse.
Even if they ALL drive instead, every person alone in a car, thats more climate friendly than flying. Flying is so incredibly inefficient.
Edit: to specify, with inefficient, I am referring to the resulting effects on climate, not cost or absolute fuel consumption.
Not really.
Assuming you are alone in a car, you will be easily at 6-8L/100km, while flying in economy class you will be around 2-3L/100km per person, depending on how much they sardine can you. Airplanes are actually incredibly efficient, we simply travel much further with them.
Fuel consumption is not the deciding factor here. Airplanes use kerosene, which has a higher greenhouse coefficient. Admittedly, it is only 10-20% higher. Way more importantly, emitting at high altitude increases the greenhouse effect by 2 to 4 times.
There have been studies analyzing aviation emissions in the past and even back then, flying had higher emissions. Newer studies suggest those numbers were extremely underestimated (by a factor of 2-3):
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02847-4
So just going by basic math, if we assume those numbers you posted are correct (didnt check them as I dont think absolute fuel consumption has any relevance for climate effects), we should multiply air plane fuel consumption by 4-12 to get a more accurate number, resulting in an equivalent of 8-36 litres per passenger per 100km. Dont quote me on this last part, it is probably not accurate, I just wrote it in reponse to your fuel comparison.
investigates
If one wants to travel from San Francisco to New York City starting on Friday, November 14th, as a single adult:
Mode Price Travel Time Flying (orbitz.com, 1 stop, Frontier) $201.56 9 hours, 7 minutes Flying (orbitz.com, nonstop, Delta) $209.61 5 hours, 31 minutes Greyhound (3 transfers) $157.95 71 hours, 50 minutes Amtrak (coach, 3 segment) $491.00 80 hours, 47 minutes Amtrak (private room, 4 segment) $1,393.00 78 hours, 55 minutes Rental car (Hertz, Ford Focus)¹ $690.96 ~144 hours ¹ Assuming ~8 hours a day driving time and Google Maps’ estimate of 44 hours driving time. Does not include hotel fees and fuel.
For a lot of people, if they can’t fly, they’re probably going to be better off just skipping their travel.
How the fuck is a train slower than a bus over that distance?
Decades of underinvestment.
It’s great that they offer the service at all, but it’s impossible to get reasonable service renting a freight rail line that goes the wrong way, while the freight company does everything they can to make Amtrak service worse to maximize shareholder value. Amtrak needs to own its own rails if we want trains to be faster than buses or flying.
And twice as expensive?
I would expect trains to be more expensive than buses. Maintaining rails, stations and trains is more expensive than maintaining roads, bus stops and buses. But in return I’d expect it to be quite a lot faster and more comfortable. A regular slow train where I live travels at 75mph - normal intercity trains travel at 125mph.
Slow trains here in the US generally don’t go over 50, and the rails in a lot of the network don’t support over 30MPH. Additionally, rail traffic gets prioritized to freight, because we don’t actually do PST (Precision Scheduled Timetables), so you might be waiting for hours on a stopped train so a freight train 10 miles up can unload.
I had heard about the priority of freight traffic, but never heard that slower trains were so slow. Over here the rail companies don’t own the track - I don’t think that makes sense at all; a national body ought to own the track so that appropriate priority can be given to passenger and freight traffic.
It depends. If the train is faster then you have lower personnel hours. You can also fit many times more people on a train than a bus so you need fewer vehicles and drivers. For city transit, commuter trains are always cheaper per passenger than busses, assuming the train capacity is being well used.
I looked up the figures for tfl buses and underground, and buses are less expensive to run - in the last year they had almost identical operating costs but buses served a lot more passenger distance. (Former info on their budget, latter is here https://tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/documents/travel-in-london-2024-trends-in-public-transport-demand-and-operational-performance-acc.pdf page 8)
I would expect long distance trains to have higher costs due to higher speeds causing higher wear and hence maintenance requirements, except for driver costs. But note that an intercity train also has a conductor and more station staff. Of course if you have a given rail network and can run the trains faster, you will save a lot on staff costs.
That’s really interesting, I wouldn’t have assumed that given the passenger counts on trains, the longer lifespan of the equipment, and the increased passenger/personnel ratio.
I guess train maintenance can be more expensive than bus maintenance, though bus engines require more complex maintenance as far as I know. I guess the capital costs of the vehicles and the rails maybe outweigh tee capital costs of the buses.
I would be interested to see a further breakdown. My guess is it’s the track and associated equipment that makes the biggest difference but idk. Anyone who’s been to London knows that there always delays due to “signal failure” so I’m guessing it’s that…
I suppose for a fair comparison you need to count the contribution of buses to road wear but I have no idea how to do that properly
More direct route, compare a map of the Interstates to a map of just the rails and you’ll see it pretty well, that’s not even accounting for the non interstate highways and biways.
Imagine having a monopoly and only ever investing your profits into executive pay. Only investing in maintenance because the wheels will literally fall off and no preventative maintenance.
Nice chart. Always good to note that you can’t possibly drive or take a train these distances for the price of flying. People complain about the level of service airlines offer and have some sort of nostalgic views regarding past air travel luxuries, but these are “cattle car” prices, so we get cattle car service.
but these are “cattle car” prices, so we get cattle car service.
considers
To be fair, one could get business class/first class service. Not worth it for me, but that’d improve the experience a bit.
Mode Price Travel Time Flying (orbitz.com, 1 stop, United, first class) $598.18 7 hours 27 minutes Flying (orbitz.com, nonstop, Alaska, first class) $1148.30 5 hours 39 minutes Certainly would. But as you say, it has a price.
Thanksgiving flights from US are gonna be wild af
It’s only for this weekend (for now).
Going to be one hell of a holiday season at this rate.
