This OP was inspired by a single quote from an ABC news story I saw early this morning. Thus, I can’t tell you much about it, or its context (which, thanks to editing, I don’t know anyway), or even who said it. But it did catch my ear and pique my curiosity, especially since the story seemed to use it in an approving way - or at least, in a way that seemed to indicate agreement.
I was kind of surprised at such a statement. Is it true? Is the era of air travel going to come to a crashing halt? I know James Howard Kunstler thinks so (*cue long approving quote from BrainGlutton :D), but he thinks a lot of other things too, and I want to focus on this.
IMHO, air travel will certainly take a massive dip due to the expense, until we find some affordable replacement engine & fuel that gives a power-to-weight ratio similar to petrochemical fueled engines. There will still be some air travel, so “extinction” probably isn’t the right word.
I expect that sea travel will have a resurgence, since a lot of the likely replacements ( coal, nuclear come to mind ) suffer from weight penalties that a ship can handle much better.
Well, I imagine there will always be some people with enough money to pay whatever fueling fee the airlines charge in return for the convenience to fly. Also, while rising fuel prices may make flying more expensive, they also raise the prices of most of the alternatives (indeed, when ever I think about flying somewhere, I usually check alternatives like greyhound or Amtrack or renting a car and driving, almost always I end up flying as none of those alternatives end up being that much cheaper then just getting on a plane, especially factoring in the extra time involved), so people that at least some people who can’t easily eliminate their need to travel will still fly.
So I’d say no, even if fuel prices stay over 100$ a barrel, some airlines will survive, albeit perhaps fewer of them. Also, hopefully at some price point, high speed rail will become more attractive for US domestic travel.
Considering what a fair number of people are willing to pay for business class or first class tickets, I doubt it. There will no doubt be a contraction (there was one last week) and fewer cheap seats but there is plenty of upward room. On the average I paid (or Bell Labs paid) more 20 years ago then I do now in absolute terms. $250 for a round trip ticket across the country is ridiculously cheap.
For a more fuel efficient way, I recommend the train. I heard a train guy say the other day that trains are two orders of magnitude more fuel efficient for cargo than trucks. Sure it takes longer, but so do dirigibles and boats.
I suspect you mean a fuel to weight ratio similar to terrestrial petrochemical engines. Which raises the question, how do jet planes compare in fuel efficiency compared to autos. How much more oil does it take to transport a 747 full of people from LA to NY compared to how much it would take if they all individually drove there in the average US automobile.
Air travel is cheaper right now than it’s ever been. Back before deregulation, it was far more expensive to fly anywhere.
Jet A fuel at LAX runs between $4.50 and $6.50/gallon today. The major air carriers get big discounts, however. Maybe as low as $3.00/gal.
A Boeing 777, which has around 350 seats, will burn about 7,700 gallons of fuel flying from New York to LA. That’s 22 gallons per passenger. Even at $10/gal, that would only be $220 for fuel cost.
Smaller airliners and older models which use less efficient engines may burn more. But the bottom line is that fuel would have to become outrageously expensive before airline travel would just vanish. However, we could see ticket prices double - in which case we’d wind up back in a situation where there are fewer regional flights, a bunch of marginal airlines could go out of business, and the poor would not be flying as much. That was the case for most of aviation’s history, and it survived.
Note: these numbers are all approximate. In real life, you have to include things like passenger load factor (the planes are rarely completely full), temperature, air density, yada yada. But for ballpark estimates, these will do.
Suppose fuel prices double, and suppose fuel prices are sole cost that airlines face. Doesn’t that mean that fares would also double? So supposing that ticket prices double, does that mean the end of air travel? Why would doubling the costs of airline tickets mean the end of air travel?
The question presupposes that people will only travel by air if air travel is dirt cheap, as it is today. But even if we see a dramatic reduction in passenger-miles traveled annually, is that the same thing as “the end of air travel”?
It is, as far as I know. That was my point. We need something as light as modern aircraft engines that produces the same power, using an energy source that has about as much energy as the same mass of modern aviation fuel.
Ah sorry, I thought you were saying that air travel will dip because they don’t compare well on a wight transported per gallon burned with some sort of existing competition. My bad
The airlines are in an open market, fares fully available for everyone, with virtually undifferentiated products. The only major difference from the “ideal” market in Econ 101 is the high cost of entry. But the result is still that fares will tend toward breakeven, no higher and no lower. IOW, they’ll always hover on the edge of bankruptcy, with only temporary forays into either profitability or receivership.
If operating costs stay higher permanently, there will simply be a new equlibrium at a lower volume of traffic, and perhaps a smaller number of competitors.
Pay more attention to the words “in the long term” at the end of the sentence. High fuel costs have cut into profits and if prices stay that high it would be a big problem. From what I can tell, though, the airlines don’t expect prices to stay that high.
As already pointed out, businesses pay higher prices for a number of reasons.
The real problem with the Airlines is the unnecessarily complex pricing/ticketing process that leads to 100 passengers on one aircraft each having paid a unique sum to travel on that airline; from squanderingly huge profit per ticket (first class business travel) to ‘not enough to cover the in-flight peanuts, but we filled a seat’.
I predict that there will be a bit of shake-out and consolidation, but over the long run, what they’re going to need are more efficient aircraft*, probably lighter, less regular schedules between certain places, and a more efficient and stable pricing structure.
The one-large-inefficient-plane-fits-all-routes days are done. To be sure, there are many sizes of planes today and they do vary them by route and demand, but they’re going to need to do more of this AND update their fleets with newer, quieter and more fuel efficient aircraft.
That might be good for Boeing. I don’t work there, but I like seeing them busy.
This article is about Diesel engines for light planes. It claims that a Diesel-powered Diamond DA42 Twin Star can carry four people at up to 231 mph on 19.6 mpg. Throttle it down to 126 mph and it will get 42 mpg. Of course you need a multi-engine rating, and the aircraft costs about ten times as much as a new fairly nice car.
But Cessna 172s have been retrofitted. A test aircraft scored 126.6 mpg and 27.4 mpg. A '60s- or '70s-vintage 172 might cost $25,000 to $50,000 depending on a number of factors, and a Diesel conversion would cost about $40,000. Still expensive, but reachable by a number of people.
I don’t see airlines turning to Diesel engines. Jets are more efficient. But as far as General Aviation goes, this might be a step in the right direction.
There are ongoing efforts to make biofuel usable by jet engines. So future air travel won’t be dependent on esoteric technologies like liquid hydrogen. Something chemically similar to aviation-grade kerosene will always be available- the question is at what price.
Rail travel might make a comeback, but as noted upthread when you factor in both the direct and indirect costs of travel time, jets save more money than they cost. And I absolutely can’t see passenger liners making a comeback; how the heck long does it take to get from the US eastern seaboard to the Pacific rim by ship? And what the heck would they use for fuel?
I don’t know what portion of travel is done for business, but at least in the U.S., that demand is relatively inflexible. If the airlines are forced to raise prices to cover increased fuel costs, then businesses will just have to spend more to cover that expense, even if they cut out as many unnecessary trips as possible. The pace of business is unlikely to change. A cross-country flight takes what, four hours? Compare that to the time it takes to drive or take the train. Even if the cost of plane travel goes up, businesses aren’t going to put everything on hold when there is an faster option available. It’d probably still be cheaper in terms of opportunity cost anyway.
Biofuel is mostly a scam. There’s no way we can afford to replace our present energy infrastructure with something that requires sacrificing vast amounts of farmland. And that’s “afford” in the sense of avoiding starvation, not money.