Antwerp to Tallinn - Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World - page 16

take sixty-four hours. We'll be spending one night on a train, two on a ship, and none in a real bed. But
we'll experience the charms of Rostock and the swells of the Baltic instead of the lifeless interior of a jet.
WHEN an airplane takes you to your destination three days quicker than a train or a ship, it's easy to see
why people choose to fly, however boring flying may be. Planes are also cheaper than most forms of ground
transport, which makes the decision even simpler. Ryanair, a budget carrier based in Ireland, has lately been
offering flights between European cities for as little as twenty dollars. That's the price of two beers at an
Antwerp nightclub.
Eye-popping fares like this have made Ryanair Europe's largest carrier. Also its most profitable. Despite
handing out tickets like lollipops, Ryanair has maintained net margins higher than those of the traditional,
long-haul airlines.
Most business analysts credit four strategic decisions: 1) Ryanair flies only one type of plane. 2) It only
flies to secondary airports, where the cost of doing business is much cheaper. 3) It packs the plane with as
many seats as possible. 4) It gives away those seats but charges passengers dearly for everything else.
The airline rakes in a fee if you bring too much luggage, and another if you check in at the airport desk
instead of beforehand, online. The flight attendants sell snacks and scratch-card games once the trip is un-
der way. Meanwhile, the interior surfaces of the plane are plastered with advertising, which brings in addi-
tional revenue streams.
In general, no budget-cutting opportunity is overlooked. Ryanair's CEO has, somewhat cheekily,
threatened to charge passengers for using the onboard lavatory. One BusinessWeek story dubbed the airline
“Wal-Mart with wings,” noting several of the more miserly measures the airline has taken: “Seats don't re-
cline, the better to cram in more passengers. Window shades have been removed, so flight attendants don't
have to spend time resetting them between flights. Seat-back pockets have been ditched—one less place
for clutter to accumulate.”
Given Ryanair's success, at a time when air carriers everywhere are struggling, this sort of penury and
squalor seems like the inevitable future of flight. To which I say: Leave me out of it. Having just crossed
the Atlantic in a large, private stateroom, the thought of being herded into an airborne cattle car gives me
itchy hives.
WHILE my personal objections to air travel mostly relate to comfort, aesthetics, and philosophic principle,
there is the growing issue of air-travel politics to consider. Antiairplane activists in Europe have become
vocal and aggressive of late. Recently, protesters set up a camp at London's Heathrow Airport, and a group
calling itself Plane Stupid disrupted operations at an Airbus factory in Wales. Environmental concerns are
the driving force behind this antiflying sentiment.
The fact is, jumbo jets burn up a lot of nonrenewable resources. Even taxiing them to and from the gate
requires an absurd amount of fuel. (Virgin Atlantic has experimented with towing its planes out to the run-
way, to reduce this waste.)
Once aloft, airplanes belch kerosene soot into the sky at a rate of a million metric tons a month. Planes
are major sources of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions, which contribute to greenhouse warm-
ing. Eurostar, the railway line that zips back and forth between London and Paris through the Chunnel,
has estimated that flying round-trip between those cities emits more than ten times the carbon dioxide the