Recently in Environment Category

It's the annual conference of the Conservative Party in the UK - those are the people who are almost certainly going to get to run the country from next summer - and one very clear piece of news out of it seems to be that Heathrow will not get its third runway.

Various senior Conservatives have more or less said this before, but the London Standard newspaper is reporting today that it will go into the manifesto as a promise. It's not impossible to walk away from such commitments when in power but it's not easy.

The New Republic magazine in the US has a thought-provoking article running entitled The End of Aviation. It's subtitled What will happen when America can't afford to fly? It's about America obviously, but most of the arguments are applicable elsewhere. A couple of years ago I would have considered them plausible, but now I'm more optimistic about aviation. Here's why...

Regular readers will know it's an article of faith for me that improved air traffic management is the only way that aviation is going to improve its environmental act to any meaningful extent in the near future. Part of that needs to be the widespread adoption of what's called required navigation performance (RNP) techniques. And it's starting to happen.

One of the biggest RNP programmes underway is the one at Southwest Airlines. They'be been a bit reticent about talking about it, but now, rather more characteristically, they're shouting about it. RNP is a wee bit complicated - but not that bad really, you just have to concentrate. Southwest has put together a nice presentation here explaining what's going on.

Their partner in all this is probably the world leader in RNP - Naverus. They have a great series of case studies on their site which really do show what the concept is all about. Start with the story that launched it all - the remarkable tale of how Naverus founder Steve Fulton, then an Alaska Airlines pilot, demonstrated at Juneau, Alaska how emerging navigation techniques could change the world. We really need to do more of this.

By a weird but genuine coincidence, a day after posting my observations on taxying times I was sent the latest US Bureau of Transportation Statistics on...aircraft taxying times. I didn't even know they collected the data. The special report is eccentrically titled "Sitting on the Runway: Current Aircraft Taxi Times Now Exceed Pre-9/11 Experience" - but you get the general idea. Below are some highlights.

Fact is, the aviation world doesn't have much in the way of ideas for becoming greener anytime soon. The only serious programme on the horizon is improved air traffic management - worth perhaps a valuable 12% in emissions but reliant on national authorities. Don't hold your breath.

But I think there is something that is not getting adequate attention. It's taxying (or taxiiing - as you wish.) Even at the same time as we're getting better at putting aircraft  in the right place at the right time in the sky, we're just awful at moving them from the terminal to the runway. In some places really awful. I was set thinking about this on a recent, enjoyable, trip.

The reason I've had a couple of weeks of blogging silence here is partly that I was on vacation but also because I then attended the third Aviation & Environment Summit in Geneva. I blogged from there on our Aviation and the Environment blog, which you may care to take a look at.

A philosophical senior manager at Snecma used to be fond of saying that if we want alternative jetfuels made from vegetable matter then there is a problem - there isn't room to grow enough green stuff to make the fuel we need without threatening food production. Being very French, even by French standards, he sums it up thus: "We can have camembert or fuel. It's a dilemma." (Since then, algae-derived fuel has begun to look more promising.)

With even the Bush administration now sort-of, kind-of, grudgingly conceding that there might be something in all that environmental change stuff - even if Gore's getting all the credit (but at least he's not going to run for the presidency) - for once the 'tipping point' cliche does seem appropriate.

Expect to see a rush by the air transport industry to establish its green credentials in 2008 of unprecedented proportions. And lots of stuff like this Christmas card from CFM - which is rather cute as e-cards go.

E-cards, showing you nearly care...

At long last (and it took months) the frankly incredible practice of British Airways' former franchisee British Mediterranean Airways (BMed) flying empty aircraft - so-called ghost flights - out of Heathrow to preserve slots has come to an end. An easy decision for BMed's new owners BMI. I was going to write a quick post celebrating that but also taking a pop at the array of public and quasi-public sector incompetents who let the situation endure for so long. But then this comes along!

I'm not decrying the technical achivements, but I do find it hard to get much joy out of the US Coast Guard's operation to the North Pole. So now we've got Airbus operations in the Antarctic and "domain awareness" in the Arctic. All sound rational motivations I suppose, but I can't say the heart skips a beat.