Classic British Flight Sim

Or does Ming Campbell and the Lib Dems really have a huge problem with planes?

I'm really fed up with them moaning about the poor environment suffering from planes! I mean, there are more cars around than planes...

I do care about the environment, but I adore classic cars, planes, trains, boats etc. I think they should be looking at it the way I do - walk and cycle when you can and use the car when you have to, take classic aircraft flights when you can but go long distances on more modern, cleaner planes, visit preserved railways but travel around the country in clean electric trains and enjoy old boats as they don't really create that much pollution, especially if their sailing yachts.

Hang on, Isn't that what we do anyway?

I'm fed up of this scaremongering over aircraft etc. it's not fair.

Much as I love aircraft, it is true that they are the least efficient way to transport people, especially over short distances. While transatlantic and trans-continetal flights have thier place, I think the problem most people have is with short flights like Birmingham-London, ore evn Aberdeen-London. These flights are vastly inefficient, using a lot of fuel and generating a lot of pollution while moving very few people. Sensible idea would be for folks to get the train, but the track is so knackered and the price structure so incomprehensible that it aint gonna happen :roll:

Isn't it cheaper to fly from Birmingham to London than catch the train?

A friend of mine told me it was something like £90 return from Lincoln to London by good old British Rail.........No wonder people still use the car!!!

Well, I flew EMA to EDI and back in January for business on the same day. BMI Baby cost about £100.

For about the same price (or a lot more) I could spend 3.5 hours each way by train - not a lot of time left for business.

Hence air travel wins.

LongHaul wrote:Much as I love aircraft, it is true that they are the least efficient way to transport people, especially over short distances. While transatlantic and trans-continetal flights have thier place, I think the problem most people have is with short flights like Birmingham-London, ore evn Aberdeen-London. These flights are vastly inefficient, using a lot of fuel and generating a lot of pollution while moving very few people. Sensible idea would be for folks to get the train, but the track is so knackered and the price structure so incomprehensible that it aint gonna happen :roll:

I recently looked at the cost of a return ticket to Scotland by train from where I live and found the cost to over 8 times as much on the plane! Certainly flying is much quicker and less stressful and thats what I would choose to do. I dont think the efficiency is such a great problem as the volume of flights. Even for an aircraft like Concorde, which theoretically was a very inefficient mode of transport, its contribution to the degredation of the environment was fairly negligible on account of there beign very few of them and the utilisation being very low. Compare this with the numbers of A32X, B737, B767/777, A330/A340 and B747s flying round today and their utilisation and the amount of fuel burned and pollutants released is much higher.

Its my belief that we are to some extant "kidding ourselves" if we think we are helping by designing ever more efficient aircraft when there will probably end up being an even greater number flying around the sky. The problem is we have become used to a high level of cheap and accessible global transport and we have become addicted and take it for granted. Only a stabilisation or even a reduction in total passenger numbers will really make a difference.