> Nearly two-thirds of the plane is business class Why is European business class so absolutely terrible?
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Lufthansa’s European Union Strasbourg “shuttle”
81–90 of 107 posts
Re: Lufthansa’s European Union Strasbourg “shuttle”
#82It seems EU politicians believe in climate change, until they have to catch a bus for a couple of hours… BTW, I am a EU citizen worried about climate change and tired of recycling at home to sometimes see this kind of hypocrisy of some politicians.
Air transport account for less than 4% of the 51 b tons of CO2 we send every year. These politicians aren’t going to make any difference. We could ask them to be role models, but with what finality? Again air transport is not the most urgent problem. I understand this is a topic that can be used to raise awareness, but the most useful thing these politicians could do is to rethink the way (EU) businesses are leading…
You realize that the individual EU countries that those same politicians represent are promoting rail travel over air travel for short haul flights for their own citizens.[1] France themselves actually passed legislation regarding this.[2]. And I know the Netherlands has made a similar attempt at legislation.
I believe consistent messaging from leaders regarding climate action does actually make a difference to the people they are asking to think and acting responsibly regarding their impact on on our fragile climate.
The EU just last year promoted "2021 the European Year of Rail."[3][4] And Adina Vălean, the European Commissioner for Transport has been very vocal about this promotion of long-distance and cross-border passenger rail travel across the continent.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-europe-travel-night-...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/apr/12/france-ban-...
[3] https://www.reuters.com/article/sponsored/connecting-europe-...
[4] https://transport.ec.europa.eu/news/end-european-year-rail-b...
Re: Lufthansa’s European Union Strasbourg “shuttle”
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you compare to a local flight within the EU? Rules about on-timed-ness and passenger compensation for delays mean that airlines now add buffers to their flight times, so most of the times it's "Wahey, we're early!", when they do experience delays they end up landing at the advertised landing time, saving them from those compensation payments.
> Did you compare to a local flight within the EU? No. Thanks for the explanation.
Then again, it's not just a EU thing: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/airlines-are-padding-flight...
Re: Lufthansa’s European Union Strasbourg “shuttle”
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or just keep adding more capitals into the rotation, until the overhead of any capital is negligible. I'm actually rather happy to have a moving capital / parliament seat. Would probably do with the fancy buildings and architecture, though.
> keep adding more capitals into the rotation, until the overhead of any capital is negligible In what world is maintaining multiple headquarters cheaper than one?
The more capitals you have, the less you need to proportionately increase your budget to add another one.
Re: Lufthansa’s European Union Strasbourg “shuttle”
#85The actual waste here is that while the European Parliament normally meets in Brussels, it is still bound by a 1992 decision to have a monthly session in Strasbourg [1]. This creates a huge and unnecessary overhead (shuttling 705 MEPs back and forth, maintaining separate offices in Strasbourg and other unnecessary duplication of efforts), of which this additional flight is just a small part. This could be fixed by de…
The French will never agree to that, sadly. It's a prestige thing for them
Re: Lufthansa’s European Union Strasbourg “shuttle”
#86The actual waste here is that while the European Parliament normally meets in Brussels, it is still bound by a 1992 decision to have a monthly session in Strasbourg [1]. This creates a huge and unnecessary overhead (shuttling 705 MEPs back and forth, maintaining separate offices in Strasbourg and other unnecessary duplication of efforts), of which this additional flight is just a small part. This could be fixed by de…
Or just keep adding more capitals into the rotation, until the overhead of any capital is negligible. I'm actually rather happy to have a moving capital / parliament seat. Would probably do with the fancy buildings and architecture, though.
They do that for the European Council, but it's probably not feasible to do so for all seven EU "houses of Parliament".
Re: Lufthansa’s European Union Strasbourg “shuttle”
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about the 10x worse carbon footprint per passenger mile? At 2 flights per month it's a drop in the bucket so who cares. But replacing the trains with flights would be extremely wasteful.
Ultimately, it seems like the price of carbon is not high enough to offset an entire cabin of business class seats of €1K+ each. If you want the behavior to stop, increase the price of carbon. It’s all about the money in the end.
The consumer in this case is the European Parliament. It's hard to think of anyone who would be less price-sensitive.
Re: Lufthansa’s European Union Strasbourg “shuttle”
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about the 10x worse carbon footprint per passenger mile? At 2 flights per month it's a drop in the bucket so who cares. But replacing the trains with flights would be extremely wasteful.
Ultimately, it seems like the price of carbon is not high enough to offset an entire cabin of business class seats of €1K+ each. If you want the behavior to stop, increase the price of carbon. It’s all about the money in the end.
I’ve seen many references to “business class” here as if it were something special and thus worthy of additional scrutiny. On Lufthansa short haul flights, business is economy with the middle seats blocked.
Re: Lufthansa’s European Union Strasbourg “shuttle”
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
If there are direct trains there is simply no excuse. Frankly, wherever there are fast alternatives, I wonder if the days of airlines are numbered. Push through rail opportunities like maybe more runs with smaller trains, better synchronization of schedules, quick connections, faster trains etc..
Sure, but just to add a bit to it there were multiple terror attacks on trains in Europe in recent years. In Germany there was this knife attack just a few months ago, as an example. You also run into some annoying folks on public transport from time to time even if they're not trying to kill you. In those pricey plane seats they're among themselves. This is the best explanation I can come up with why they're doing i…
The advantage is you can fly from wherever your constituency is in the EU to Frankfurt and then connect on to Strasbourg, and do the same on the way home.
Re: Lufthansa’s European Union Strasbourg “shuttle”
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Members of the parliament (legislative power) are not the government, which is the European Commission in this case (executive power).
And by a comment on the page, the flight also takes not only MEPs but members of the EC as well
One assumes that since it has an LH flight number, anyone who wants to pay for it could book the flight.