Loyal reader and commenter Paul Birkeland points me to this USA Today interactive map showing the decline of air travel in the US. It’s an update of a map we reported on last year, back when fuel prices were soaring and more and more planes were remaining earthbound as a result.
Since last year, fuel prices have come back to earth. But with the economy now in a nosedive, it looks like the airlines are cutting back even farther on flights. USA Today now projects that domestic air capacity this March will be down by a little over 8 percent, compared with March ’08. And unlike last year, air travel is on the downturn throughout the Northwest: off 6 percent in Washington, 11 percent in Oregon, and 14 percent in Idaho.
I, for one, am tired of the endless stream of gloomy economic statistics. I want some good news for a change. Still, this particular story fascinates me, since it shows strongly our energy-consuming ways are affected by upticks in fuel prices, and downdrafts in the markets. Apparently, basic economics really do affect our behavior: all the green cajoling and preaching over the last decade or so about the climate impacts of air travel has never had this kind of effect. Which means that, for those of us concerned about how air travel affects the climate, the real trick will be to keep air emissions low even after the economy takes flight again.
Paul Birkeland
Clark – We’ve got a little bit of “topic creep” going on here. The original post was made in the summer when airlines were cutting capacity in response to the high price of fuel. Basically, they were cutting routes that had become unprofitable due to the cost of fuel, and the majority of the losers were the small and medium sized towns. The discussion was that this is an indication of how the airline industry will react, and how smaller towns will be come more isolated, in a Peak Oil scenario. The recommendation was that “sustainability” was becoming a more real need for those towns.The current cut in capacity is based in the economic crunch, as you pointed out. Of course the economic downturn can be at least partly attributable to the cost of oil, but the impact is different. Here we see a more broadly spread cut in airline capacity as the airlines react to a reduction in customers.I think we can anticipate seeing this pattern once again, and perhaps repeatedly over the next five to ten years. Economies heat up, the cost of oil skyrockets, airlines cut unprofitable service to small and medium towns. Then, as the cost of energy is more broadly felt, economies deteriorate, passenger numbers go down, and airlines cut capacity along major routes. Demand for oil goes down, energy prices go down, and economies start to pick up again. It will be an increasingly volatile ride with higher highs and higher lows in the cost of oil.In this way, the smaller towns are the first to become increasingly isolated as peak oil manifests itself.Now, the question becomes, will surface transportation follow this model at some point?Paul