World News
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
view the rest of the comments
It is not the airliner which is the problem, it is the government. Compare it with the tobaco and alcohol industry: You can't expect them to protect the health of their customers and to reduce their profit voluntarily, If you want to reduce alcohol consumption, you just need to make the stuff more expensive with taxes etc. A bottle of spirit would cost the same as a bottle of cola if the government would not interfere, it is the task of the government to avoid this danger to society. The same with air travel: To make air travel less attractive is not the task of the airliner but a task of the government. At this moment, airliners are pampered, get tax free fuel, can expand at the cost of the neighborhood, etc. so what do you expect?
The air travel industry doesn't care much about fuel consumption. They still descent with flaps and spoilers out, instead of trading off altitude for speed slowly. They fly with speeds of 400+kts, but just like with cars, going slower saves fuel. And as long as the airliners demand fast airplanes, manufacturers keep designing them, despite the higher fuel costs compared to a slower plane. Again, making fuel much more expensive could cause the industry to rethink their strategy. There is a tipping point where customers accept a longer flight time for a substantial reduce in costs.
I agree with you wholeheartedly that aviation fuel subsidies must end, and train travel should be prioritized above all else.
That said, it's not true that going slower saves fuel, for multiple reasons.
All you say might be true for the current design of airplanes. But it is like saying, "this formula 1 race car is really more efficient on the race track than in urban traffic, hence driving cars faster is more efficient.". I agree flying higher is more efficient. There is however no rule that you need to get to 400kts in order to be able to fly at FL350. It all depends on the design of the airplane. In general, for every form of transportation, road vehicles, boats, airplanes, going faster always means "spending progressively more fuel". I built my own airplane. And sure enough, flying it at 160kts instead of 140kts costs more fuel, at any altitude. And, not insignificantly, my small propeller airplane has a lower fuel consumption per passenger per mile than the airliners do, despite the latter flying higher and faster... What is the reason of that? There was also the Concorde. It could fly even faster, and higher, but... it used way more fuel. But this also doesn't mean that flying the Concorde close to its stall speed would be more efficient. There is no way to fly the Concorde at the same efficiency as a 737, at any speed or altitude, because it is designed to fly high and fast, and burn more fuel to make that possible.
So, I'm pretty sure, if we would not optimize the design of airplanes for a certain speed, but for the lowest fuel consumption, you might indeed end up with airplanes that fly slower (and maybe lower) than the designs we have now, and we could have airplanes that use less fuel per passenger per mile.
An airliner is not an F1 car though, that's a jet fighter. All I'm saying is that I think if Ryanair could get a plane that would eat less fuel but take twice as long to make a trip, they would jump at it. The Concorde shows exactly that, while some airlines might want the prestige, mostly they just want to provide the cheapest service they can get away with.
Are you carrying enough fuel while doing that to do a trans-Atlantic flight? Airliners do. Can you fly over the troposphere to avoid significant weather that, beyond having people throw up, would have planes divert and use a lot more fuel as well? Airliners can. There are other reasons, of course, but these are just off the top of my head. All that said, of course fuel efficiency is but one of the things airliners are optimized for, and there are other concerns, but speed is not really one of them for the sake of it.