US DOT Aviation Climate Plan

I am currently on the Amtrak Cascades line between Seattle and Vancouver, returning from the awesome SeaGL 2025 conference at the University of Washington. I decided to cancel the US leg of my flight home because of the airport chaos caused by cancelling 10% of domestic flights. But it got me thinking that reducing air travel by 10% could have a huge effect on the USA’s greenhouse gas emissions.

My best estimate from the US Greenhouse Gas Inventory is that aviation emissions are about 125Mt annually. If we assume that the air traffic reduction will last about 1 month, that month would normally account for about 10Mt of emissions. A 10% reduction would thus make up about 1Mt of emissions.

For scale, that’s about the annual emissions of around 54,000 Americans. Not a bad reduction! It’s kind of a small percent of the total 6343 Mt the US puts out every year — about 0.016% — but I guess every bit counts. Given how tepid other climate action, even unintentional, has been in the US this year, we should probably congratulate the US DOT for its bold climate action.

#airtravel #climate #seagl2025 #trainsnotplanes #usdot

US DOT Aviation Climate Plan

I am currently on the Amtrak Cascades line between Seattle and Vancouver, returning from the awesome SeaGL 2025 conference at the University of Washington. I decided to cancel the US leg of my flight home because of the airport chaos caused by cancelling 10% of domestic flights. But it got me thinking that reducing air travel by 10% could have a huge effect on the USA’s greenhouse gas emissions.

My best estimate from the US Greenhouse Gas Inventory is that aviation emissions are about 125Mt annually. If we assume that the air traffic reduction will last about 1 month, that month would normally account for about 10Mt of emissions. A 10% reduction would thus make up about 1Mt of emissions.

For scale, that’s about the annual emissions of around 54,000 Americans. Not a bad reduction! It’s kind of a small percent of the total 6343 Mt the US puts out every year — about 0.016% — but I guess every bit counts. Given how tepid other climate action, even unintentional, has been in the US this year, we should probably congratulate the US DOT for its bold climate action.

#airtravel #climate #seagl2025 #trainsnotplanes #usdot

"United, Southwest and Delta airlines began cancelling flights for Friday in compliance with the Federal Aviation Administration’s directive that will see reductions in flights at 40 major airports from Friday to help address air traffic controller shortage safety concerns as a result of the government shutdown."

~ Edward Helmore

#Trump #Republicans #shutdown #AirTravel #flights #airlines #airports
/9

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/06/us-40-airports-traffic-reduced

“Today airlines began to cancel hundreds of flights. The Federal Aviation Administration said that reductions will begin at 4% on Friday and go up until they hit 10% on November 14.”

~ Heather Cox Richardson

#Trump #Republicans #shutdown #AirTravel #flights #airlines #airports
/8

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-6-2025

Ground stop at JFK due to staffing

https://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/adv_otherdis?advn=13&adv_date=10312025&facId=JFK&title=ATCSCC%20ADVZY%20013%20JFK/ZNY%2010/31/2025%20CDM%20GROUND%20STOP&titleDate=10/31/2025

#HackerNews #GroundStop #JFK #Staffing #AirTravel #AviationNews

Most of the energy used in commercial flights is just to get the plane up to cruising height. What if an electric drone could help lift an electric passenger planes to cruising height, then detach and return to the airport to recharge.

The plane itself would only need to carry enough energy to maintain cruising height until it's time to land. Plus redundancy in case of delays. But it would still need to carry way less energy than existing planes.

#RenewableEnergy#AirTravel#ElectricPlanes