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People don't hate on plane travel enough
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2026
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Unpopular Opinion
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While I agree that plane travel needs to be reduced, and trains should be prioritized, most people typically take a plane less than once a year. The problem isn't Joe Schmoe taking a vacation overseas with his family every once in a while, it's the millionaires and billionaires taking flights every other day on their private jets.
Nah... the problem is not the vacation "overseas" but the amount of domestic flights that could have been avoided if we had a proper (fast, cheap, comfortable) rail network.
How many flights do we have between, e.g, Boston-New York, LA-San Francisco, Dallas-Houston, Chicago-any city in the midwest? Thousands of flights that are less than 3 hours in duration, but we have to take it by plane. Maaaybe some of them could be made by bus, but buses are slow and super cramped.
Now imagine if we had good train service. Even if we were not talking about bullet trains, if you count the time it takes to board/deboard + the time it takes to get to airport to the city, there is a good chance that the train travel would take less total time.
I think amtrak is super comfortable, it's just ridiculously NOT cheap or fast.
For example, driving from Santa Barbara CA down to San Diego, is about 4.5 hours' drive with light traffic. You can expect to pay like $100 in gas round trip.
Now, the amtrak line is $88 per person round trip last time I checked, and takes like six hours
So
You can drive a sedan and bring several people in your car and spend $100, and have a car in San Diego
Or you can take the train, spend as much as you would on gas for a commuter car for ONE person, take 25% longer to arrive and get home, and then you're in a city with no car instead of having a vehicle...
Why TF am I choosing the train, again?
It's hard to compare with cars because cars/fuel/highways are seriously subsidized.
Both are a problem. Private jets are much more wasteful but only a small portion of total kms traveled
If people stop commuting by plane to do a meeting I think the bulk of airplane travel would stop.
At least the morning and afternoon planes are usually full of people in suits where I live.
How have you gathered apparently representative data on morning and afternoon flights? Do you work at an airport or airline?
Thats doesnt really prove anything, the fuel burn is at its peak during take off and landing since it requires a lot of force to actually lift up. On the contrary, sustain flight is very efficient.
Shorter distances isnt a valid excuse - in fact, it is the direct problem you're seemingly defending.
How do planes compare to travel by boat? Then what about a car ferry if you go on as a foot passenger or only take a bike, are you really taking up any space on it?
So if you're talking freight, ships are unparalleled in their energy efficiency, even when you look at the disgusting dirty fuel they use. They're SLOW, which reduces friction with water, and have economies of scale.
However, planes are more efficient for passengers due to the volume (of people). People take up a lot of space, much moreso than cargo, which makes giant boats really not the most efficient choice for human transport because you end up using a giant hull with tons of overhead to move all these lightweight people across the ocean. Once planes get up to cruising altitude they hit a sweet spot where their fuel efficiency improves drastically, but it's still not nearly as good as trains.... But I have no idea how to calculate how expensive or environmentally damaging it would be to build and maintain a set of trans-continental railways. I can only imagine the insane amounts of marine destruction needed for any amount of transport bandwidth...
And none of this is taking into account time, which is another important factor. A container ship takes 10-14 days to get from New York to London; a direct flight takes about seven hours.
Suppose the route is important too. I live in Portsmouth, so the ferry to France is right here and I think it is better than flying to France. But that is also a short flight.
Plus its a car ferry, so its mainly transporting cars with people as a bit of an extra. I suspect there is much more variation with sea travel compared to flight.
I'm not saying private jets aren't a problem. Both are a problem
I don't think people going on holiday are the problem. Its the power users, a small percent that just fly too much like its taking the train. I have a rich family member that has three houses around the US and they split their time between them all. Often flying 3 times a month, perpetually. Its a horrific and wasteful lifestyle.
Power users make a bigger difference. But that doesn't mean others shouldn't be conscious of their impact.
On the flip side i worry everyday folks, who aren't the real problem, shame themselves everyday for living just because they're self aware, when the actuall problem makers are oblivious to their own behaviors and won't change.
Imo people should strive to be better than average for where they live. Leads to continuous improvement. Never make the mistake of trying to be the end goal society needs to reach while everyone else is still far away, the mass of changes is important, so you'll just make yourself miserable and not save the world anyway.
Yeah.. I wish for people to feel proud that they are contributing and wanting to contribute more because it makes them feel good. Instead of debilitating shame for thinking they aren't doing enough.
Damn you're right its ubiquitous now
Just a quick DuckDuckGo AI response. ~~Further~~ Actual research can be done on your own.
So, cars are worse. But sure, planes aren't "great" either. It's just that the amount of cars on the roads of the world is so significantly much higher than planes, as well as number of trips per day, that plane travel fades in the shadow of cars. There's so much driving compared to flying.
AI is not research. This may all be hallucinated.
And the only way to tell whether it's a hallucination or not is to check it by doing the research yourself ... which is what you should have done in the beginning.
I know. Fixed. But I will not be doing any research myself β I'm not the one interested in finding out information regarding this. OP should be, however, since it seems to be a major concern for them. π
And you think OP is incapable of asking the AI?
What do you think you're adding to the conversation by adding AI to it?
Was the information wrong?
The information is pointless because it easily could be wrong. And now anybody who wants to know whether it's wrong or not has to research it themselves ... which they could have done from the beginning.
It just adds a layer of wasteful AI slop that, ultimately, brings absolutely no new information to the table.
Then that's an ad hominem. There's always a potential for error so that alone is not per se disqualifying; and despite how much it might anger you, the major LLMs are more accurate than random chance on questions like this. I feel like if you're going to be bitchy about it (and you seem quite determined to be bitchy about this), you have an obligation to at least do better than the guy who did almost nothing. At least google it or something. Right now you're just telling us, "I can't even say that's wrong, I'm just upset you used an LLM."
I'm not trying to "add AI" to this, nor am I asking OP to use AI... I am saying that actual research should be done to find out more/actual facts.
I think you're derailing this from where I intended it to go. I just wanted to show a quick example of what was already stated β that commercial plane travel is quite efficient, fuel-to-passenger wise. But if "you" want to know more, there's better sources than the quick AI response, hence why I mentioned that it was an AI response in the first place so there's no mistaking it for a real quote. I made sure I cropped the image very carefully too, to include that it was AI, so there's no doubt of that fact.
We're on the same side here, of AI hallucinations and all that, friend. Don't worry. π So let's put that to rest, thanks.
We're really not, if you still think injecting AI slop into a conversation is a good and useful thing to do.
Then we are.
Now do AI search vs a normal search
I did a normal search, the AI response just showed up automatically because I put a lot of words in the query. π
https://noai.duckduckgo.com/
I know about that π
This one makes it so you always get noai: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/duckduckgo-no-ai-search/
It's okay, thanks, I'm good. I can simply turn it off if it bothers me. I normally just don't look at it, and you can turn it off in the settings anyway. π Thanks though.
The point is that it bothers other people if you do less than half-ass research and then present it as though it's valuable.
I can get that, I'm very anti AI myself, but is it worse than someone just... stating it? I just presented some numbers. Take it or leave it, I did say some actual research needs to be done to confirm. π€·ββοΈ I got OP to dig deeper into the topic, and they found interesting stuff that they shared. Mission accomplished from my standpoint. π
Yes, it's worse.
Either do slightly more research (click the links in your ai answer) or less, otherwise you're likely to spread hallucinations and misinformation.
I'm with you. I've done both. It's very similar to spreading political memes presented as real that turn out to be false/satire. You're supposed to verify shit is real before you spread it.
I hear what you're saying. I said to OP to do the research that needs doing. They did. I'm considering this case closed. β
So when I did my own research I came to the conclusion that.. it depends.. There is more going on that just the amount of CO2 being put in the air. It's being put in a different space, from a different fuel type with different byproducts. Either way, it's pretty bad for the environment, just like cars are. And we don't have hybrid or electric large planes yet.
Also, nobody drives their car 5000+km
Very interesting findings! So I guess the question then is, are the total byproducts left in the air by air travel "equally" "bad" (by some measure), compared to the total left by car travel, based on the altitude, chemistry, effects on the atmosphere and ozone layer, ecosystems, individuals, etc. Very complex. π
There is aot of people so yes everyone taking a vacation one a year is a problem when everyone does it. Then you have the people who go two or three times a year. It all adds up.