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.
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.