Flooding in Palm Springs. Mudslides in Los Angeles. Sink holes in the Antelope Valley. An earthquake. A hurricane. What a weekend. Let’s blame Ben and Gary and all those other horrible frequent flyers.
Should Frequent Flyer Programs (And Private Jets) Be Banned?
Helen Coffey of the UK Independent asks, “Should frequent flyer schemes still exist when the climate is in crisis?” She’s not happy that “research” reveals that you will have to 34 times your “entire lifetime carbon budget” in order to reach top tier status in an airline program.
(She doesn’t reveal which loyalty program she is talking about or who assigned us a lifetime carbon budget…)
“She blames “increasingly savvy” online communities which “have sprung up to cater to this new breed of loyalty scheme ‘gameification’, such as The Points Guy, Head for Points, One Mile at a Time, View From the Wing and Inside Flyer.”
Gary, Ben, and Brian: your social credit score is not looking so good these days.
Coffey then laments the difference between points and tier points (which is a British way of saying what we have traditionally distinguished as redeemable miles and elite status miles).
What she fails to understand is that switching to a revenue-based frequent flyer model, as British Airways is doing, does not necessarily encourage more flying since you can now earn elite status with far fewer flights or distance traveled. In fact, most can earn status with far less flying.
Rejoice?
She cites a study called Pointless: the climate impact of frequent flyer status, by a terrorist organization called Possible that wants to ban people from flying. Maybe they should just come out and say that China and India should be banned too…
Alethea Warrington, a senior campaigner at Possible, starts with a premise that simply validates the changes airlines have made to their frequent flyer programs:
“We need urgent action to protect the climate, but frequent flyer reward programmes are sending emissions soaring in the wrong direction. Airlines are incentivising a small group of incredibly frequent flyers to take flights they don’t even want, just to get points – while people around the world pay the real price as they face dangerous heat waves and out of control wildfires. Airlines need to end this irresponsible behaviour, and stop awarding points for pollution.”
The idea that airlines are incentivizing flyers to take unnecessary flights is far less prevalent when you can earn elite status simply by spending a high amount of cash on a small number of tickets (as many did already) without having to fly a high number of miles or segments to reach the goal (which becomes additive in many cases).
Yes indeed, the weather patterns have not been comforting in many cases. The risks of climate change are something we should take seriously through aggressive investment in technology like carbon capture which may be able to counteract.
Possible wants frequent flyers programs banned in the UK and its wants a frequent flyer tax levied against those who fly regularly.
British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have both said “thanks but no thanks” and noted all the benefits of air travel, insisting that the baby not be thrown out with the bathwater. I think this British Airways video perfectly sums up why flying is so important:
CONCLUSION
I’m feeling the impact of the changing climate in a very big way this morning (you think last week was bad?…stay tuned)
The author claims that “aviation is already an elite activity – and flying enough to qualify for top tier FFP status is elite as it gets” and wonders, “Isn’t it time the biggest emitters paid the price rather than getting a pat on the back?”
The answer, though, is not to ban frequent flyer programs (or devalue them) or to ban jet travel or cap the number of flights a person can take each year. No. Flying makes the world go round. There has to be a better way. Efforts spent on technology will be more fruitful, because no one is going to cut back.
If it was not patently obvious, I don’t blame OMAAT and VFTW for the climate crisis…
image: Emirates
I read that article and was laughing at the writer calling out Ben, Gary and others. Not that I’m even remotely a fan of some of their stances, but it was completely absurd to try and pin it on miles bloggers. Great title, Matthew…I laughed again.
Helen is another controlling left wing lunatic.
At least she’s not a criminal like your master.
Brilliant rebuttal
No lunacy required. In addition to the true believers, quite a few people make careers out of that sort of stuff.
Does she want another airline enhancement, like 500,000 miles for a one way economy class award seat from ATL to DCA?
She forgot to mention the plastic waste generated by getting a new credit card.
I can get behind this! Gary is at fault for many things.
Instead of blaming an industry that provides services, like transporting goods and people around the world, try promoting something positive, like investment into safe and renewable fuels. These fuels could be used not only in airplanes, but in the trains and ships that transport manufactured goods like the clothing the writer may have been wearing, the computer used to write the article, or the furniture and chair they were sitting on to write it. So many items people around the world use are manufactured in countries like China and India, and then shipped across the planet.
There are many options, like hydrogen or bio fuels, that can have a positive impact on the transportation of people and goods around the world. If you want to help the planet, invest your time, energy, and thoughts, into the support and promotion of positive answers. Give people are reason to hope, not hate.
as somebody who used points as part of an evacuation strategy from palm springs, perhaps frequent flyer miles are actually often a key and useful thing in getting out of some of these disasters
She must be why Delta SkyPesos charges 1,000,000 miles for a one way economy ticket to Europe. Both of them are saving the environment by making it impossible to take any flight with point, making them not worth earning.
Also carbon capture seems very expensive. More realistic solutions to climate change are public transport, penalties for large cars and SUVs when they are not needed. For aviation things like a single European sky with more optimesd flight paths would make a true difference.
We should all become Amishs. Ride our carriages and live much longer.
The Amish don’t really live longer. It just seems that way because they’re so bored.
These are your people, Matt. Don’t get mad that they are doing just what you want them to do.
Excuse me?
Far better to look at how to reduce the impact through technology. For example contrails are a major driver of aviation’s impact on global warming. New research suggests that small changes to flight paths could significantly reduce the contrail impact
More here https://blog.google/technology/ai/ai-airlines-contrails-climate-change/
C’mon, admit it, you’re just a little bit jealous she didn’t name your site as well.
Ha. A work in progress.
Matthew’s site REDUCES flying so he is a good guy. He flew to Benin so we can read about it and not have to go. He experienced the Lockheed L-1011 in Benin for us as well as the voodoo market and the mad prostitute with clicking ĥeels at the hotel restaurant.
You think reading about it is any substitute for the real thing?
Like any of us need another left wing whack job telling us how to live…..
If she would have done her research, she’d know Qantas is the one to blame for climate change. Most people use points to occupy seats that are going out empty anyway… but those points planes they’ve been doing lately. Thanks a lot, Australia!
Sorry,,,,I’m an evil elitest who likes to travel, to see and meet new people..and I don’t appreciate being lectured to by liberal wackos who would have us return to covered wagons and candles,,,,keep flying folks!!!!
The world has decided that climate change doesn’t matter. We should should be adjusting to our new reality.
Her whole rant is about mileage running which has been gone for how long now?? Late to the Party. Ha!
Exactly. And while it was still a thing for BA Exec Club Tier Points, it no longer will be after the new program changes.
There are still plenty of opportunities for mileage and status running on the likes of Saudia, EgyptAir, Aeroméxico, and even SAS- not that she would have even heard of any of those airlines.
This is quite bizarre. I think there are much bigger fights to pick for mitigating greenhouse emissions. Air travel only accounts for roughly 2.5% of global emissions (8% domestically) (EPA.gov and ourworldindata.org). Power generation, industry, and road transport make up roughly 75% combined. Also- as was pointed out, the evolution of elite status incentivizes less travel as you can sit at home and buy things on a credit card.
I’m all for protecting the planet but there are much bigger sources of pollution to target than aviation.
Curiously she hasn’t gone after the DiCaprio’s, Clintons, Clooneys or the like……wonder why.
Oh dear I’m getting censored on the blog. It’s all over for me now.
Who censored you?
You didn’t? I posted one of my usual and it seems to have disappeared. I assumed you deleted it. You have the power!
Air transportation contributes a fair amount of CO2 to the atmosphere, but manufacturing, sea transport, trucking and farming contribute way more. Consider that India gets 80% of its electricity from coal and, as of 2021, China had 1,000 coal fired plants and another 350 planned or under construction. How much do they give a damn about climate change? Nags, like this woman, have only two chances of being relevant to them…slim and none.