The emptiest plane on which I ever flew was an All Nippon Airways flight from Tokyo to London in June 2020 amid the pandemic. It was a Boeing 777-300 with about 250 passenger seats, of which 4 had been crammed: in airline lingo, it had a load issue of lower than 2 per cent.
We crossed continents like a ghost flight, the attendants devotedly sticking to their regular in-flight routines and strolling by the empty rows of seats to verify that nothing was amiss. Flight ANA-211 was a fragile hyperlink between Japan and the UK within the days when many passenger flights stopped: I booked on the final minute and the tickets had been memorably low-cost.
Flights are actually a lot fuller, and fares larger. When I returned to Japan earlier this 12 months, direct fares had doubled in price and I related in Hong Kong to economise. The identical is true of short-haul flights as folks ebook up eagerly for summer season holidays: Ryanair, now Europe’s biggest airline, this week reported robust bookings, and easyJet has performed the identical.
With stronger demand and better jet gas prices have come stiffer costs. Ryanair carried 16mn passengers in April — greater than the identical month in 2019 — and its plane had been 94 per cent full. Its fares have risen by 10 per cent on pre-Covid ranges and the service’s well-known €9.99 fares (earlier than paying for luggage and higher seats) are a fading memory.
Airlines are notoriously cyclical and liable to shedding money: the trade collectively lost $138bn within the annus horribilis of 2020, once I took the ghost flight to London. Even in good occasions, margins are tight. Prices have fallen in actual phrases for many years as a result of they keep on shopping for new plane (Ryanair has ordered as much as 300 737-Max 10s from Boeing) and making an attempt to fill them.
Despite this, I imagine the trade’s warnings that we will must pay extra to fly: “We are in an entirely different world where air fares are rising,” one govt advised the FT this week. Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s chief govt, could keep squeezing rivals together with his motto that “lowest cost wins” however it will not really feel like that for the client.
With restrictions lifted, folks need to fly once more: “Short-haul flying has roared back to life because of pent-up demand,” says Frankie O’Connell, reader in air transport on the University of Surrey. They should deal with fewer, stronger carriers: Ryanair’s flights had been about 80 per cent full a decade in the past, however seats are actually scarcer.
Not solely can such airways cost extra; they will quickly must. The trade faces an enormous technological problem in assembly its self-imposed target of reaching web zero carbon emissions by 2050. It is unimaginable to take action on the present flight path, on condition that aviation accounts for about 2.5 per cent of world emissions, and shifting to a different one will be extraordinarily costly.
Ryanair exemplifies the normal strategy: keep on rising however attempt to curb the environmental influence by changing outdated plane with fashionable twin-engined jets that burn much less gas. It promised this week that individuals switching to its flights from different airways may minimize their emissions by as much as 50 per cent as a result of of what it dubs its “game-changer” fleet of newer 737s.
Well, up to some extent. It is true that such plane assist by lowering emissions per passenger, however it’s sluggish going. The final of Ryanair’s new Boeings is because of be delivered in 2033, solely 17 years earlier than the online zero goal, and effectivity can solely partly mitigate development. Some 10bn passenger journeys are expected in 2050, 5 occasions the amount of 2021.
There is little probability of turning to electrical or hydrogen-powered aviation quickly: Airbus intends to fly a zero-emissions hydrogen aircraft by 2035 however it could take €300bn of funding to construct the infrastructure in Europe alone, one research discovered this week. Even then, taxes on jet gas can be wanted to make hydrogen flight aggressive.
The greatest medium-term wager is sustainable aviation gas, produced from waste oils, fat and non-food crops. The trade is counting on SAF for two-thirds of the contribution to reaching its web zero goal. But it will be exhausting and expensive to provide sufficient: Dave Calhoun, Boeing chief govt, warns that biofuels will “never achieve the price of jet fuel”.
There is an iron logic to all this: flying goes to be costly. I remorse it, in some ways. Aviation is marvellous for taking holidays in attention-grabbing locations and exploring the world, regardless of crowded airports and cramped seats. But flyers haven’t borne the total environmental price, even with carbon offsets, so one thing has to present.
Prices may be highly effective, as the expansion in flying inspired by low value carriers exhibits. The French authorities has decreed a ban on home flights of lower than two and half hours between cities nicely related by trains. France is an outlier however larger fares may have an identical influence elsewhere in squeezing short-haul flight, the place there’s a respectable various.
For my half, I’m going to Amsterdam subsequent week by prepare. The Dutch authorities has been blocked by a court docket from curbing flights to Schiphol airport, and it could have been cheaper to fly. One day, it is probably not.
john.gapper@ft.com