"While the rest of us are changing our light bulbs and trying to cut down on car journeys, the super rich are making choices which are emitting 60 to 80 times the greenhouse gases that would be emitted if they made the same journey by train. It is obscene." -Leo Murray, spokesman for Plane Stupid, campaigning against Heathrow airport expansion.

A caveat on every airline voucher should read: “Buy the ticket and take the ride.”

Health impacts on airline passengers - particularly “frequent friers” repeatedly exposed to high levels of high-altitude gamma, cosmic and x-rays, and flight system electromagnetics - are not much mentioned in popular media heavily depended on airline advertising. But they amount to aerial roulette.

Faced with rising fuel costs and environmental restrictions, packed planes are "going to make travel even less pleasant," foresees BAC's John Weber. After writing a book about air rage, Andrew Thomas expects hostility to keep pace with rising passenger levels rise. People are "more stressed out," he says. [USA Today April 14/05]

Companies that insist on flying key executives across oceans for brief, face-to-face meetings may be

Lynchpin of the body's immune, hormonal and metabolic rhythms, the pea-size pineal gland is releases brain cell-protecting and sleep-inducing melatonin at dusk. But jetting across several time zones - particularly while outpacing the sun by flying west-to-east -melatonin is messed up.

“The ability to think clearly, remember key facts, and make sound decisions can be profoundly hampered by these upsets in the biological clock,” reports the Cognitive Enhancement Research Institute. Michael Smolensky, professor of environmental psychology at the University of Texas, has seen “a lot of bad decisions made by jet-lagged employees who weren't alert, where the company also got sold down the line when people make decisions when they weren't capable of doing it.” [PR Newswire March 28/02; Smart Drugs II: The Next Generation]

Frequent flyers also face the same radiation that is decimating long-haul flight crews. New York-based medical physicist Robert Barish urges anyone flying more than 75,000 miles a year be declared a “radiation worker” - just like airline pilots and flight attendants, who became official “radiation workers” with an FAA ruling in 1996.

Because of negligible ozone shielding at altitudes above 35,000 feet, the radiation streaming invisibly through fuselages, bones and tissue is hundreds of times more intense than at ground level. Following a May 2000 EU directive requiring member airlines to assess flight crew exposure to the radiation resulting when energetic particles strike the stratosphere, pilots now wear radiation dosimeters in the cockpit.

Jetliners are already breaching the EU's limits for nitrogen dioxide pollution, making current airport use unlawful, Monbiot points out. Now the number of flights will nearly double. Depending on government or independent academic figures, by 2050 the greenhouse gases produced by the UK's air passengers will equate to between 91% and 258% of the carbon dioxide the government says the entire British economy should be producing. “Its airport expansion plans, in conjunction with those of other nations, will cause runaway climate change even if we were to spend the rest of our lives shivering in the dark,” Monbiot writes. “So much for the economic benefits of new runways.” [monbiot.com; Guardian Aug 21/07]

The British government admits that "there is no viable alternative currently visible to kerosene as an aviation fuel." Headline grabbing biofuels for ravenous jets would require more arable land than this watery planet offers.

“This is now broadly understood by almost everyone I meet,” George Monbiot observes. But it has had no impact whatever on their behavior. When I challenge my friends about their planned weekend in Rome or their holiday in Florida, they respond with a strange, distant smile and avert their eyes. They just want to enjoy themselves. Who am I to spoil their fun? The moral dissonance is deafening.” [AlterNet Mar 1/06]

Such pathological denial is a species-liming option. At the least, the short-lived pleasures of aerial holidays will create a living hell for the next generation. “A plane flying from Australia to London, for example, will use more than 200 tonnes of jet fuel and pump out more than 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide. On a flight from London to Miami, one person will be responsible for climate change emissions equivalent to one car doing 12,000 miles. Multiply that by 350,” reports Melanie Reid, Down Under. [Sydney Herald. Sept 13/05]

Referring to high-altitude jet travel, Monbiot concludes, “Flying kills. We all know it, and we all do it. And we won't stop doing it until” governments start “closing the runways.” [AlterNet Mar 1/06]

Passengers receiving the equivalent of a chest X-ray for every four hours of flight, do not wear dosimeters. A round trip between New York and LA exposes everyone onboard to at least two-and-a-half full-body X-rays.

When solar flares send radiation levels soaring, astronauts receive advance warning to duck behind special shielding. Airline passengers remain oblivious. But their DNA does not. [Geophysical Research Letters Mar 2/05]

Some airline pilots are refusing to fly above 35,000 feet, while others will not leave the ground during the strong sunlight of daylight hours. They must have read a American Journal of Epidemiology study of 2,740 Air Canada pilots that found pilots suffering from higher rates of several kinds of cancer than the general population . [American Journal of Epidemiology 143; Health Physics 79]

Flight attendants and pilots working an average of 16 weeks during pregnancy are also suffering nearly double the rate of miscarriages as women on the ground. British Airways grounds flight crews when pregnancy is announced. But not pregnant passengers exposing their fetuses to high levels of radiation. [Journal Occupational Environmental Medicine 1998]

In the largest ever study of cancer among flight attendants, scientists from the California Department of Health Services looked at members of the Association of Flight Attendants. They had about twice the incidence of melanoma skin cancer than expected and the incidence of breast cancer was 30% higher. [BBC Nov 20/00]

Another study from Iceland looked at the risk of breast cancer in 1,500 female flight attendants. Those who had been in their job for five or more years before 1971 - the year jet travel became routine - were five-times more likely to develop the disease than those who had been in their post for less time. [dehavilland.co.uk Oct 22/03]

A major survey of US Air Force aircrew from 1975 to 1989 uncovered “a notable excess” of cancers throughout the body. The risk of radiation-induced cancers has also been found to be elevated by exposure to electromagnetic fields emitted by the aircraft's radios, radar and electrical systems. [AP Aug12/98; Chemtrails Confirmed by William Thomas]

Like corporations peddling cell phones, tobacco, microwave ovens and lethal pharmaceuticals, giant airline companies intent on bottom line survival continue to downplay the health hazards of high-altitude flight. This must be why medical studies published by the UK Department for Transport - as well as such peer-reviewed medical journals as the Occupational Environmental Medicine, Aviation Space and Environmental Medicine. Health Physics, British Medical Journal, Cancer Causes and Control, and Health Physics - have looked into:

“Possible Effects On Health Of Aircraft Cabin Environments”, “Air Canada Pilots: Mortality, Cancer Incidence, And Leukemia”, “Exposure To Cosmic Radiation Of British Airways Flying Crew On Ultra-Longhaul”, “Cancer Incidence In United States Air Force Aircrews”, “British Airways Flightdeck Mortality Study”, “Galactic Cosmic Radiation Exposure Of Pregnant Aircrew Members”, “Incidence Of Cancer Among Finnish Airline Cabin Attendants”, “Risk Of Breast Cancer In Female Flight Attendants”, “Evaluation Of The Cosmic-Radiation Exposures Of Flight Attendants” and an “Overview Of Aircraft Radiation Exposure”. [bbc.co.uk]

The number of airline passengers “coincidentally” dropping dead after long flights enduring radical pressure changes while breathing dry, oxygen-starved air in cramped seats have not been released. But “thrombosis” blood clots forming in the legs during flight are blocking some hearts and cancelling repeat business.

Diverting “bleed air” from the engines into the cabin would help. But this increases fuel consumption. As Farrol Kahn, head of the Aviation Health Institute in the UK points out, “The airlines don't want to circulate 100% fresh air in the cabins on the grounds of cost.” [BBC Nov 10/00]

Contrast this with flight in solar-airships currently under development. Strolling through gondolas where panoramic windows are open to fresh air, while wafting “jet lag-free” across slow-moving time zones, burning no hydrocarbons, unfazed by high-altitude and electromagnetic radiation from non-emitting Direct Current motors and aircraft systems, and arriving at your destination refreshed and rejuvenated by a uniquely pleasurable experience - what's not to like?

Even those willing to risk their longevity frequently flying in the region Everest climbers refer to as “Death Zone,” are severely impacting the health of a biologically interconnect place called Earth.
When it comes to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, a British Royal Commission calls air transport “the most heavily-polluting form of transport on earth.”

With the runway speeding past and four huge jet engines howling at take-off thrust, a 36-year-old 747 gulps a gallon of fuel every second. Just five minutes into an eight-hour flight, each jumbo jetliner will have burned the day's oxygen production of a 44,000 acre rainforest. [Ecodecision 1995]

Flying two pounds of pesticide-laced asparagus from California to Britain uses 900-times more energy than the organic home-grown equivalent. Depositing the spoor of their passage directly into the stratosphere, jet aircraft emissions have 2.7-times the environmental impact of those on the ground. [Independent May 28/05]

Don't blame the planes. It's just the nature of these aerial workhorses. But like any herd grown far too numerous, their grazing the atmosphere and leaving persistent damaging waste in their wakes are threatening our planet with the biggest crash of all.

Even as stark warnings of climate scientists ring doom in our ears, and the thunderous calving of distant ice sheets reaches into our living rooms accompanied by apocalyptic TV images, we can't keep our feet on the ground. With more than three million people flying every day - and more than 35,000 daily flights criss-crossing the United States alone - the demand for long distance levitation is a near-vertical trend heading for 7.4 billion people taking to the skies every year within the next dozen years. [WorldNetDaily.com May17/02; KXJZ Sacramento, California Dec 21/04; Sydney Herald. Sept 13/05]

All pilots know that any aircraft pulled into a steepening climb will eventually lose lift, create turbulence over its wings, and stall. If hauled into a steep turn at the same time - say to avoid oncoming carbon taxes or similar environmental regulatory flack - the stalled aircraft can flip over onto is back in an irrecoverable inverted spin.

The only question is, will the crash of the global airline industry come in time before our planet becomes a hellish nightmare of dead oceans, failed crops and rising seas? Unless the government takes action to restrict demand for flights, carbon dioxide emissions from air travel could account for two-thirds of the UK's aggressive emissions targets by 2050. [Guardian Oct 17/06]

But Gaia scientist James Lovelock, and world atmospheric scientists not in the pay of oil companies unanimously agree: “We do not have 50 years.” With 1.7 billion people reaching reproductive age, Earth could be accommodating 8.9 billion hungry consumers by 2050. If temperatures climb another 3° F, as expected by mid-century, jetliners hoping to land near a coast will have to be equipped with pontoons. [perfect.co.uk; Independent Feb 3/05; www.earth-policy.org]

Greenland's biggest glacier is now melting eight-times faster than in 2000. “This is phenomenal,” says Waleed Abdalati, a senior research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. [Washington Times Dec 16/04]

Creatures of another realm, jets prefer to cruise in the cold, airless reaches of the stratosphere, more than two miles above the Earth. Pollutants linger here. By the time a New York-departed 747 descends into Ireland, some 239,000 pounds of “Jet A” will have left a trail of kerosene soot, other heat-trapping gases and ozone-destroying chemicals in its wake. Though soot accounts for only 1% of jet emissions, more than a million metric tons are released into Earth's recirculating stratosphere every month. The moisture that condenses around these and other nuclei from millions of jet exhausts forms clouds that are heating the Earth. [Ecodecision 1995]

Already, commercial and military jets have stolen our skies. For every kilogram of fuel burned more than three pounds of water vapor is produced by jet engines and injected directly into the cold, narrow stratospheric layer at an altitude of 10-11 kilometers, where it will do the most lingering damage. Water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas, carpeting the skies with contrails, and trapping far more heat than CO2. A British Royal Commission reports, ""Switching from kerosene to hydrogen, would replace carbon dioxide from aircraft with a three-fold increase in emissions of water vapor."

Each additional 5% increase in cloud cover caused by contrails results in a regional temperature increase of one full degree. In fact, David Travis and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater have found that nighttime temperatures more than more than two degrees Fahrenheit greater in the presence of contrails.

When tied to heat-driven weather events… "It's obviously a significant effect," says Andrew Carleton, an atmospheric scientist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park and a member of Travis's team. “Locally, contrails are equally as significant as greenhouse gases." [Christian Science Monitor July 29/97; Coastal Post Apr/97; Flug Revue June/98; Nature Aug/02]

On the busiest air routes over the USA and Europe, high-altitude jet pollution has increased cloud cover by up to 20% since the jet age took off nearly 50 years ago. Boosting local warming 35-times higher than global averages, air traffic concentrated over parts of the United States and EU is helping set near-yearly worldwide temperature records. [solcomhouse.com]

What about CO2? A return-flight for two persons from London to New York produces about as much carbon dioxide as an average passenger car in the EU does in a whole year. That NY to LA round trip flight, or trans-Atlantic return trip adds another ton of CO2 into the stratosphere (around 35,000 feet). That's 600 million tons of carbon dioxide from air travel alone added to Earth's groaning atmosphere. [solcomhouse.com; Environment News Service Mar 14/05]

But CO2 is not the only, or even the “baddest” jet turbine emission. Airliners and military jets like eight-engine B-52 carpet-bombers also produce enough ozone-eating nitrogen oxides and other greenhouse gases to ratchet up their total climate change contribution up to four-times higher than that of most other industries, reports Green Party European Parliament member, Caroline Lucas. [BBC News Dec 20/06]

According to "Aviation and the Global Atmosphere," a technical document prepared by thousands of scientists in a worldwide network called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the largest impacts of aircraft on climate are through CO2, nitrogen oxides, and contrail formation. Expelling hot exhaust gases into their turbulent wakes, destructive chemical reactions occur among soot, carbon monoxide, water vapor, three kinds of nitric acid and sulfuric acid, writes Jim Scanlon in the Coastal Post. [Coastal Post Apr/97; Environment News Service Mar 14/05]

Jet pollutants laid down in the clear frigid calm of the stratosphere modify Earth's atmosphere about 100-times longer than when released near the ground. One of two types of CO2 molecules spewed by jet engines may hold heat in the upper atmosphere for 100 years. [Ecodecision 1995]

Airbus Industries warns that the biggest jet pollutants - nitrogen oxides - are also the most dangerous. NOx emissions produce ozone in the lower atmosphere, trapping heat and sickening living organisms, just like the photochemical smog strangling the occupants in gridlocked toy traffic scrolling below.

“Oxides of nitrogen react with and destroy ozone in the stratosphere when exposed to ultraviolet radiation from the sun, Scanlon explains. “Flying in the stratosphere, these exhaust gases destroy ozone. Flying in the troposphere they produce ozone, a heat trapping gas in the 'wrong' place.” [Coastal Post Apr/97]

Unfortunately, the 50% boost in fuel economy achieved by jet engine manufacturers since the early 1970s have long been absorbed by cheap flights. Despite stunning gains in fuel efficiency from 1977 to 1988, rising passenger volumes fueled a 37% increase in consumption. [news.bbc.co.uk; NASA April 2000; Ecodecision 1995]

Even worse, the hotter temperature inside today's more efficient jet combustors are much noisier, produce more heat-trapping water vapor, and cause even more ozone-eroding NOx to be released. [NASA April 2000]

Released from jet turbines high in the stratosphere, these rising nitrogen oxide emissions cause 30-times more atmospheric warming than when released near the ground - causing as much global warming as all car emissions worldwide. Satellite measurements show a half-degree Fahrenheit warming per decade commercial air traffic is heaviest. This is huge. [NASA Apr/00; Flug Revue June/98]

“Low Ozone Events” have occurred over Northern Europe and North America in the days following the busiest air traffic days leading up to and after Thanksgiving in the United States. Though ozone-destroying CFCs have been largely scaled back worldwide, zooming jet traffic and chlorine-spewing space launches are seeing the protective ozone layer over Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Scandinavia dwindle to levels nearly as low as those found in the baking Antarctic. As cancer and cataract-causing ultraviolet radiation streams through Earth's thinning ozone layer, the Netherlands ozone levels are sometimes two-thirds below normal. [European Space Agency Dec 2/99]

As we enter the era of Peak Everything, corporate computers untroubled by an ongoing Sixth Great Extinction Event and not programmed for climate flips intend to add another 13,500 heavy jetliners to the world's crowded skies by 2017- more than doubling the current fleet. According to a Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, if aviation grows as predicted, by 2050 it will contribute 75% of all greenhouse gas emissions over Britain. [Sydney Herald. Sept 13/05]

No wonder that government commission recently called jet travel a “risk to the planet” - and urged travelers to take the train instead. [Independent Feb 9/05; NewScientist.com Feb 2/05;Coastal Post Apr/97]

Unfortunately, this is not an option in the United States, where this carbon conscious reporter found during an excruciating 26-hour ride across two states that long-neglected passenger trains must wait long hours on sidings for illegally-prioritized freight trains. In Canada, the one-way train fare from Vancouver to Toronto is $4,000.

The insistent question remains: What are we going to do right now? Given the consequences of jet travel, the only sane answer is: We've got to stay on the ground. And find a low-impact way to aviate.

Even as the British government legislates strict carbon emission reductions, while okaying runway expansions at 13 major airports, the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee says that the airline growth Whitehall is encouraging will require "the equivalent of another Heathrow every five years." [AlterNet Mar 1/06]

This cannot happen.

“We must reduce aviation's expansion or give up on tackling climate change,” observes Caroline Lucas. “Flight numbers are projected to double by 2020 and triple by 2030. But it is also driving phenomenal growth in the airlines' greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore their contribution to devastating climate change. According to scientists at the Tyndall Centre, one of the UK's foremost climate change institutes, aviation's emissions are growing so fast that they will gobble up all reductions from every other sector if they are left unchecked.” [Independent June 22/06]

Looking at air transport, a British Royal Commission estimates the hidden costs of climate change caused by the airline industry at $70 billion a year - for the EU alone. The British DOT calculates the environmental damage caused by each flight of thousands of these aircraft:

Airbus 340 $7,500
Boeing 747-400 $10,300
Boeing 767-300 $5,250
Boeing 777 $7,800
[Department for Transport report “Valuing The External Costs Of Aviation” 2000; Christian Science Monitor July 29/97; Coastal Post Apr/97]</FON

The good news is that a global scientific consensus is emerging that the warming must be kept below a further global increase of three degrees Fahrenheit if complete catastrophe is to be averted. This means the world must reduce atmospheric emissions by 50% by 2050. Rich countries - and the biggest carbon emitter, China - must cut theirs by 30% by 2020. [Independent Feb 9/05]

"Unless the rate of growth in flights is curbed, the UK cannot fulfill its commitments on climate change," said Dr. Brenda Boardman, the project leader of Oxford University's environmental change institute.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said "We agree that the 'polluter pays' principle should apply to aviation as to other sections, and that aviation should meet its external costs, including the costs of its contribution to climate change." [Guardian Oct 17/06]

Commercial aviation is already facing stiffening regulatory pressure from the European Union, where all industries will soon be forced to cut back their emissions under parliamentary plans to cut the number of deaths through air pollution from 370,000 to just under a quarter-million a year by 2020. [Guardian Sept 22/05]

In the face of stiff opposition from the airline industry, the European Union is about to impose extra “carbon” charges on foreign and domestic carriers. "We are showing our determination to fight climate change," said Europe's environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas in Brussels. "This is one way to persuade other countries to come along with us."

Starting in 2011, the legally binding rules will apply to all flights within the European Union. Peter Lockley, a policy analyst at the Aviation Environment Federation in London, praised Dimas for "standing up to pressure from the U.S. and certain sections of the aviation industry" by including all flights landing at and taking off from European airports.

Lockley also urged that airlines, like other heavy polluters in Europe, be required to reduce their emissions from 1990 levels, rather than hold at present levels.

Richard Dyer, of Friends of the Earth, told the BBC: "This is a tiny step in the right direction. It's not big enough, not urgent enough and not soon enough." [BBC News Dec 20/06]

But the International Air Transport Association has already won European concessions, including a delay in specific plans to regulate nitrogen oxide emitted by aircraft engines.

As in other countries like the United States, UK airlines and airports enjoy about $22 billion of tax breaks and subsidies. Unlike motorists screaming for relief from doubling pump prices, no airline pays tax on fuel. If they did, the British Exchequer would have more than $12 billion in extra revenue to deal with climate shift. [Sydney Herald. Sept 13/05; Guardian Oct 17/06]

Glaciologists are “shell-shocked,” echoes Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. “It is happening quicker than we thought-in some cases the responses have been within months,” adds Abdalati. previous estimates (of sea-level rise) are being outpaced.” [New York Times Jan 8/08; Guardian July 14/04; Washington Times Dec 16/04]

Even waiting until 2030 to curb emissions from jets, ships and other sources will be too late. “Climate change will have lurched, like Frankenstein's monster, beyond control,” writes Greenpeace co-founder and Toronto's eco-TV reporter Bob Hunter. [Eye July 25/02]

The rising oceans are also turning to acid from all the CO2 pouring into them from our cars, planes and industrial processes. And we are heading quickly toward a cataclysmic release of more than a billon tons of methane from thawing tundra and ocean seafloors. [Independent Feb 9/05]

While headlines focus on struggling airlines and surging airfares, "the ice is moving faster both in Greenland and in the Antarctic than the glaciologists had believed would happen," warns Chris Rapley, outgoing head of the British Antarctic Survey. The “Awakened Giant” of Antarctica's western ice sheet is melting much faster than feared, threatening to drown world coastlines in a slow-motion, permanent tsunami. As the movement of about 300 glaciers in the Antarctic Peninsula unexpectedly surges towards the sea, a thaw that continues to outpace predictions could quickly drive up world sea levels more than six feet.

A one-foot rise will swamp shorelines, moving the most gradually sloping shores permanently inland 100 feet or more. A 20-inch rise in sea level will put 3,500 square miles of the southern coast of the United States underwater.

Problem is, writes Stephen Hume, “The most productive arable land for most of humanity lies at the present sea level in coastal regions.” An three-foot sea level rise will flood and salinate “something like 30% of the world's agricultural lands,” reports the Global Warming Crisis Council.

About 100 million people now live within three feet of sea level.

If the Greenland icecap continues sliding into the ocean, the splash will send sea levels worldwide jumping by about 25 feet.

If this meltdown is not immediately slowed through deep carbon cuts, more than two-thirds of the world's large cities, and 634 million people living in coastal areas worldwide will be displaced by rising sea levels. Hundreds of millions more people living less than 33 feet above sea level will be fleeing storm surge flooding cities like Los Angeles and New York. [11th Hour DVD; Vancouver Sun Feb 4/08; Global Warming Crisis Council Aug/03; [New York Times Sept 28/05; Reuters Aug 23/07 and Oct 10/08; Independent July 20/07; AP; discovery.com Mar 28/07]

Yet, fueled in significant part by a long legacy of cheap but costly air fares, worldwide carbon fuel emissions are surging past 900 tons each second. The first 10 months of 2007 were the hottest ever recorded. [AP Dec 29/07]

Is zooming through thin air more than two miles above the Earth worth the risk to planet and passengers? Or should we be booking with passenger-accommodating freighters, taking the train, or staying home instead?

"We do not have much time and we do not have any serious option. If we do not act quickly to minimise runaway feedback effects we run the risk of making this planet, our home, uninhabitable," warned UK environment minister, Michael Meacher in 2002. Tony Juniper, Executive Director, Friends of the Earth, adds: "The convenience we enjoy in covering huge distances in a short time is one of the fast-growing threats to life on earth."

Unless the boom in cheap flights is halted, countries will not be able to meet the Kyoto and Bali targets for cutting back the emissions that are heating the oceans and atmosphere, with catastrophic consequences. The reporters conclude: “People will have to be 'priced off planes' and the cheap flights bonanza will have to end.” [Independent May 28/05]

Luckily for the continuance of human civilization, this is already happening as the end of cheap oil is about to make jet travel a luxury affordable only by a few. With each 10% increase in airline ticket prices, reducing ridership by up to 15%, the number of scheduled flights in the United States has already dropped to 22,900 fewer flights than the previous May. And given surging fuel prices - up a staggering 85% from a year ago - service cuts will continue, New York Times predicts. [Guardian Oct 17/06; New York Time May 21/08]

Already, 40% of an airline ticket pays for fuel. With similar implications for air carriers around the planet, industry analyst Ray Neidl of Calyon Securities now says that U.S. airlines need to cut flights throughout the United States and Canada by at least 20% - or the entire capacity of Continental Airlines, US Airways and Frontier Airlines. [Dallas Morning News May 23/08; timebomb2000.com]

British Airways' boss Willie Walsh has announced that cheap air travel is “over”. [Daily Mail May 24/08]

He was referring to airplanes that burn most of their fuel fighting gravity and drag. With nearly half of all short-haul flights in Europe around 300 miles - and similar airline use in the U.S. - fuel-gulping jets straining for altitude barely level off in cruise before descending again. As for the propeller-driven Beachcraft and Cessna commuter shuttles, says airline industry consultant Robert Mann Jr. “You can profitably fly small airplanes only if the people on them pay very high prices.” [New York Time May 21/08 Independent May 28/05]

But that's not going to fly.

What now?

Worldwide passenger air miles were predicted to exceed 7 billion miles a year by 2020.

And air cargo has been growing from 2.2 million tons in 2002 to a forecast 5 million tons of airborne freight in 2010.

Since these demands for air transport are only going to increase, the turbulence currently upsetting world airlines with skyrocketing fuel prices are creating a silver lining for the return of cloud-like airships using modern materials, advanced technologies and hydrogen-solar-fueled electric propulsion to move passengers in ocean liner-like luxury and bulk goods point-to-point, without elaborate airports virtually anywhere on the globe for a fraction of the cost of levitating heavy aircraft. [Sydney Herald. Sept 13/05; Independent May 28/05]

That's a headfull.

Or maybe not. As jetliners and cargo planes become non-cost competitive in the face of rising fuel costs and imminent carbon taxes, the world's merchant fleet is about to be hobbled by similar carbon levies on annual emissions already exceeding one billion tons of CO2. That's nearly 4.5% of all global emissions from shipping more carbon-spewing cars, more cheap junk to Wal-Mart and many other nonessentials across dying oceans. Sulphur and soot emissions from cargo ships have also been found by a peer-reviewed study to be killing 60,000 people every year. [Guardian Feb 13/08]

The only conveyances that can possibly address our long- and short-haul air transport needs are lower-flying, fuel efficient - preferably electric-powered - solar airships.

(Future airship executives take note: With conventional airfares driven by maintenance and fuel costs, after 2,200 kilometers on my own electric vehicle, I have found simple electromagnetic electric motors to be silent, powered by pennies, and 100% maintenance free.)

Is it time to bring back the zeppelins?

No.

It's time to bring on the Dynalifters, Aerostats, and other modern variants of this arcane yet fabulously successful aeronautical technology. Will you be among the first to build the ship pictured below?