Revealed: 5,000 empty ‘ghost flights’ in UK since
2019, data shows
Exclusive: A further 35,000 flights have operated
almost empty, with climate campaigners calling the revelations ‘shocking’
Why ghost flights operate remains unclear.
Damian
Carrington and Pamela Duncan
Wed 28 Sep
2022 13.10 BST
More than
5,000 completely empty passenger flights have flown to or from UK airports
since 2019, the Guardian can reveal.
A further
35,000 commercial flights have operated almost empty since 2019, with fewer than
10% of seats filled, according to analysis of data from the Civil Aviation
Authority (CAA). This makes a total of about 40,000 “ghost flights”.
In one
quarter, for example, 62 empty planes left Luton airport for Poland, while in
another, Heathrow saw 663 almost empty flights going to and from the US. Both
quarters were during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Air travel
results in more carbon emissions an hour than any other consumer activity and
is dominated by a minority of frequent flyers, making it a focus of climate
campaigners. They called the ghost flight revelations “shocking” and said a jet
fuel tax was needed and airport expansion plans should be questioned. The UK
government describes ghost flights as “environmentally damaging”.
Why ghost
flights operate remains unclear. Only airlines know the reasons but they do not
publish data that explains the practice. Ghost flights may run to fulfil
“use-it-or-lose-it” airport slot rules, though these were suspended during the
height of the pandemic. Other reasons cited by airlines include Covid
repatriation flights or the repositioning of aircraft. But these cannot be
verified and campaigners said more transparency was needed.
The new
data gives the fullest picture to date of the number of UK ghost flights, as
previous data only counted international departures. It now includes
international arrivals and flights within the UK. The CAA will now publish this
data quarterly, as a result of a series of FoI requests by the Guardian.
“Publication
of this data is a step in the right direction, but we need more transparency to
understand why these inefficient, polluting practices continue, and to hold the
main airline culprits to account,” said Tim Johnson at the Aviation Environment
Federation. “Given the climate emergency, the revelation that so many near
empty planes have been burning fossil fuels and adding to the CO2 building up
in the atmosphere is pretty shocking.”
A
spokesperson for the Department for Transport said it would work with the CAA
to monitor aircraft occupancy and seek greater transparency on the issue of
ghost flights.
The data
shows an average of 130 completely empty flights a month since 2019. The number
of empty flights remained at a similar level before, during and after pandemic
travel restrictions, with the second highest level in the second quarter of
2022. This suggests the reason the airlines chose to fly empty planes was not
related to the impact of Covid on aviation.
Half of the
empty flights were within the UK and the top seven airports accounted for
two-thirds of the total, led by Birmingham with 1,455, Luton (1,307) and
Bristol (758). The number of empty flights did not correlate with the total
number of flights at each airport, suggesting they may reflect issues on
specific routes.
There have
been an average of 1,200 almost empty ghost flights a month since the start of
2020, when numbers jumped at the start of the Covid pandemic. Most of these –
about 80% – were to or from foreign destinations.
Eight
airports, among the busiest in the UK, accounted for about two-thirds of the
almost empty flights since 2019, led by Heathrow (10,467), Manchester (3,309),
Gatwick (2,766) and Stansted (2,197). Edinburgh and Glasgow both had more than
1,500 almost empty flights.
Alethea
Warrington, at the climate charity Possible, said: “This shocking new data on
ghost flights is yet another example of how the aviation industry cannot be
trusted to get its emissions on track to tackle the climate crisis.”
“Following
a summer of record-breaking, runway-melting heat, this wanton waste of carbon
by airlines flies in the face of those feeling the full brunt of our warming
world,” she said. “To end this for good, it’s time to start taxing kerosene to
discourage unnecessary emissions.”
A
spokesperson for Airlines UK said: “Millions of flights arrived and departed
the UK between 2019 and 2022, with only a tiny fraction operating without or
with few passengers and for a variety of operational reasons driven by the
pandemic.”
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Airlines
have denied operating ghost flights to retain slots. The normal 80:20 rule,
meaning 80% of flights on a route must operate to retain the valuable slots,
only applies to the busiest airports and was suspended from the end of March
2020 because of the pandemic. It was reintroduced as a 50:50 rule in October
2021 and rose to 70:30 from the end of March 2022.
Some
airlines have said that some ghost flights took place during the pandemic to
fly in Covid-related supplies on passenger planes. However, the CAA data
records fewer than 300 flights since the start of 2020 carrying cargo but no
passengers.
A
spokesperson for Birmingham airport said: “Flight occupancy fell during the
pandemic due to travel restrictions. During this time flights into Birmingham
included British nationals returning from ‘red list’ countries, PPE and Afghan
refugees.”
A Luton
airport spokesperson said the reasons for the high number of ghost flights
included Covid travel restrictions and regulatory requirements regarding
aircraft airworthiness and pilot licensing. “Following the removal of all
travel restrictions, average passenger loads per flight have returned to 88%
this summer,” he said. Repositioning of aircraft and maintenance was among the
reasons given by Bristol airport for its ghost flights.
Heathrow is
the UK’s busiest airport and had the highest number of almost empty flights. A
Heathrow spokesperson said: “At a time [during the pandemic] when the industry
was losing billions, no operator would have been flying a plane without it
being commercially viable or without an operational need. As borders closed to passengers,
airlines switched to cargo operations, delivering vital medical supplies for
the country.”
Anna
Hughes, at the Flight Free UK campaign group, said: “Putting tens of thousands
of empty or near-empty planes in the air during a climate crisis is a vast
waste of money and a needless source of emissions. It makes a mockery of
people’s efforts to reduce their own emissions. If it makes business sense for
the airlines to do this, there’s something badly wrong with the business
model.”
The
spokesperson for Airlines UK said: “UK airlines are fully committed to
achieving net zero emissions by 2050. Alongside filling our flights as much as
possible, we are making ‘jet zero’ a reality by modernising our airspace to
further reduce inefficiencies, using at least 10% sustainable aviation fuel by
2030 and driving the development of zero emission commercial aircraft.”
Johnson
said: “Several reasons have been put forward for near empty flights during the
pandemic, but the provision of 2019 data – a record year for airport passengers
in the UK – highlights a wider problem. The data also shows that 50,000
aircraft arrived or departed from Heathrow and Gatwick alone in 2019 less than
half full. This must cast doubt both on these airports’ claims that they are
effectively full and need to expand and on their claims to be responding to the
urgency of the climate challenge.”
All the
flights in the CAA data are commercial passenger flights and air crew training
flights are not included. There were thousands of ghost flights to oil rigs but
these were not included in the Guardian analysis. The CAA data also lists
Bournemouth airport as having 933 empty flights, but the airport said the vast
majority of these were non-commercial flights run by a company that is a tenant
at the airport.
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