Megan Smirti

The Bright Spot of the Aviation Industry — Southwest Airlines

The ATA Smart Brief for the past couple of weeks has been nothing but doom and gloom.  Losses, capacity cuts, aircraft decommissioning. What a pleasure to get today’s headline: Southwest Airlines reports 15% increase in second quarter profits.  Southwest, their incredible hedging, their on-time performance, their amazing sometimes sub 20 minute turns, and flying only the 737, a low fuel consumption per passenger aircraft, truly serve them well. 

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Flying by BART

BART’s service tweaks coupled with gas prices and tourism seem to have paid off: BART to SFO ridership jumps 65%

As a loyal BART rider, I’m glad to see this sort of positive feedback to increased service. Hopefully they’ll consider extending rush hour service past 6pm for the late-night grad student crowd…

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Stephen Colbert on GHG Emissions from Aircraft (and Carl Pope)

Carl Pope, the Sierra Club president, was on the Colbert Report on Monday July 21.  Highlights include Stephen asking Carl if he flew from San Francisco, his home, to DC for the interview on a spotted owl, as well as Stephen thanking him at the end for emitting 2 tons of carbon just to visit.

He also had some choice words (or maybe accurate observations) about Berkeley Grad Students.

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"End Gridlock on the Runway"

Today’s NY Times has an opinion piece by Secretary of Transportation Mary E. Peters.  In this piece, Peters advocates strongly for peak-period or demand-based pricing and notes the inefficiencies presented by the current weight-based fee. She explains economic principles using aviation examples. She notes the contradictory nature of the airlines — they are happy to peak-period price passenger tickets (which is why you’re thinking about booking that Christmas trip today), yet they airlines in turn refuse to pay peak-period prices for landing at congested LGA at 5PM.

In one paragraph she notes that weight-based prices discourage airlines using larger aircraft, a practice which could reduce congestion while providing the same passenger throughput. I believe she could have taken this point even further, but, not surprisingly, seems to have steered clear of any environmental statements. Regional Jets (think American Eagle between DC and NY, 44-50 seats) have a much lower fuel efficiency per seat, and therefore a much higher emission rate per seat than, say a 120-137 seat 737. That statement alone could strengthen the points made in this paper — use larger aircraft, alleviation some congestion, move more passengers with lower GHG per passenger! This study is related to research of mine in progress–watch for a paper coming out soon.

For more information about this topic, check out a press release and listen to a session that the TRB committee I’m on held regarding congestion at the NY airports: Sitting on the Tarmac: Reducing Delays at Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark Airports.

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Green Continental

On a recent trip to Cleveland, I had the (surprising) pleasure of flying Continental. Ever since I caught Continental’s talk at the 2008 Transportation research Board annual meeting on their environmental practices, I’ve been wanting to see if it was PR or reality. 

Well, after 1. being yelled at by a flight attendant for almost putting a plastic cup in the aluminum recycling bag, and 2. starting up the second engine after taxing out to the runway, I can at least confirm they are carrying out the practices they have reported doing, as noted on Continental’s environmental website and in their talks.

While they are still an airline, and still emitting lots of local pollutants and GHG emissions, they are taking steps to protect the environment.

Another note: While on my flight on last week, I read about how Continental is planning to cut capacity in September 2008.  They are pulling their flights from Houston to Oakland — sad news for OAK which has seen Aloha, ATA, and Skybus either go bankrupt or pulled out of Oakland. But, potentially good news for the system — Cranky flyer has a great post here about what he sees happening with these capacity cuts.

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Shuttle Buses and Power Outages

Today I had the misfortune of wanting to travel from Fairfax VA to Northwest DC during rush hour, a usually inconvenient but not impossible feat. Throw in a tree down between west falls church and east falls church metro stations and this becomes a sweaty, messy, fight your way through the entire suburban population of DC event. See article here.

There was a tree down between the 3rd to the last stop (west falls) and the 4th to the last stop (east falls) on the Orange line, a huge commuter line, and it went down circa 5pm. Bad timing. But what is baffling to me is that the replacement shuttle buses to serve those wanting to travel between these stations were ONLY running between east falls and west falls church! I mean, it doesn’t take a transportation engineering graduate student to realize that the crowds will grow to be uncontrollable if you are running full trains to the ‘burbs on 90 second headways.  Why not have shuttles from multiple surrounding stations, so that the congestion is spread and the crowding does not impede travel that IS possible at those two stations? I have no idea why the DC plan for response to atypical event is so misinformed, slow, and poorly planned. Let this be a lesson if something much more serious than a soaking storm and power outage occurs.

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Aviation and Running: What a Team

Richard Branson is really moving up on my list: first raising awareness and plunking lots of research dollars into aviation and climate change, and now sponsoring a major marathon! According to runblogrun, Virgin is sponsoring the 2010 London Marathon, which is one of 5 marathons in the world marathon majors.

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SFO: Expansion & Greening

With the re-opening of Terminal 2 at SFO in 2010, the airport will add 14 gates with hopes to continue growing traffic. To head off environmental concerns with this increase in traffic, the airport is already looking at some environmentally-friendly plans: mandated use of ground power for aircraft at gates, requiring vendors to practice business as sustainably as possible, and allow hybrid vehicles to have preferential parking at the airport. I will watch with interest to see how these plans play out.  This is reported in the SF Chronicle and also in Jaunted.

My last three posts have been about airport-related plans to mitigation climate change impacts of aviation. This is an interesting yet unsurprising arrangement, one that I am not done thinking about or writing about. Stay tuned.

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San Diego Airport to Take On GHG Emissions

San Diego airport is implementing on-airport strategies to reduce GHG emissions, according to this article. The measures include alternative fuel airport shuttles, ground power for aircraft while at a gate, and “green” maintenance where possible. This is a really interesting development along the lines of airports playing a large role in GHG reduction from the aviation system, and I’ll certainly be watching to see if/how other airports respond.

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Port Authority & Carbon Offsets

The Port Authority of NY NJ is building a website where passengers can pay to offset their carbon emissions. I have tons of respect for PANYNJ — they are undertaking the ambitious goal to reduce their GHG emissions by 80% by 2050 — however, I am not a fan of offsets. Beyond their real ability to reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere, they perpetuate the falsehood that emissions don’t have to be reduced by technology and behavior. See here for a great article on carbon atonement.

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