> 500 ground positions, 300 cabin crew positions and 300 cockpit positions and approximately 400 positions at KLM subsidiaries and Air France-KLM group functions
Non-skilled employees are for a tough ride as a crisis is when most people loses their jobs, and it is when it is more difficult to find a new one.
But, this is appalling news for many highly specialized employees. Many of them had a career in fly-related fields.
To have skills on an industry that suddenly disappears under your feet is the nightmare of any skilled worker.
The software industry slowly re-invents itself, and one needs to keep up to date. But, it has never been such a turning point so fast and that seems that is going to last for long.
And that is not per se bad. What is bad is that there no safety net whatsoever and losing a job in the 21st century can feel a bit like having put out out in the desert in the neolithic.
Case in point: many European countries with safety nets are just not a cruel place to be at this time.
It's almost a famous joke from behind the Iron Curtain. The original was actually slightly different:
Q: What's the difference between capitalism and communism?
A: In capitalism, man exploits fellow man. In socialism, it's exactly the opposite.
(Note: original as in, the question was phrased in terms of what's the difference, and the answer famously began with "in capitalism, man exploits fellow man", which was a standard formulation of propaganda texts. There are, of course, countless variants, as with any joke.)
It was a tongue-in-cheek way of pointing out that, even though they claimed to have eradicated the exploitation of workers by the owners of the means of production, all that Communist regimes of the time had achieved was to replace it with the exploitation of workers by the state, for the benefit of a small elite that ran the whole system. Once you cut through the propaganda and the jargon, workers were still being exploited (in the Marxist sense) by a small group of wealthy individuals.
The exploitation of man by fellow man was a pretty famous, and often-invoked part of Marxist doctrine, and one of the first things that were covered as part of political education courses in schools, workplaces and so on. Besides making the point above, it also mocked the stiff, pseudo-scientific Marxist-Leninist propaganda speak. Most of the people in charge of "political education" were uneducated party activists -- the kind of people who would, indeed, say that "in capitalism, man exploits fellow man, whereas in socialism, it's exactly the opposite" with a straight face, without understanding the double-entendre.
Oh, come on — it was a wild ride if you were employed in an unsustainable VC-funded startup in the US. But the bubble bursting barely even registered for those in larger companies, dealing with longer-term software.
> it was a wild ride if you were employed in an unsustainable VC-funded startup in the US
Does it matter? Also, there were loads of techs/devs hired for year 2000 bugfixing. After 2000 it took a while to find something else for them or let them go. Quite a huge amount could not find anything to do after 2000.
I remember being at a large company in 2001 that was forced to shed about 40% of the workforce: Accenture (which went from 40k employees to a bit over half that.) Same story for most of the large systems integration consultancies.
Same story for many of our clients: telecom firms, financial services firms
People remember 2000 as a tech startup bubble burst. But it was just as much a bubble burst for telecom (AT&T, Global Crossing, Lucent, others), financial services firms, and consultancies.
> based on the current measures, which include the non-renewal of temporary contracts (1,500 FTEs) and the Voluntarily Departure Scheme (2,000 FTEs). Additionally, natural attrition (500 FTEs) through retirement and the like
Voluntarily Departure Scheme will most likely provide a nice compensation package and people nearing retirement will simply not be replaced by new hires.
> Voluntarily Departure Scheme will most likely provide a nice compensation package and people nearing retirement will simply not be replaced by new hires.
It would be tremendously helpful for layoff notices to improve on the communications of this point, as folks who can be provided a gentle glidepath to retirement are in a different situation than someone who still has many years or decades ahead of them in the workforce and is thrown into a pandemic job market.
Phrasing here is weird how "non skilled" people in for a "tough right", but for skilled people this news is "appalling".
Seperately, I'm a developer and I stopped working in March due to reasons unrelated to COVID-19 and now I'm finding it exceptionally hard to get back in and find a job.
That can be explained by most companies operating with a hiring freeze right now.
I was interviewing with a few companies and all but 1 froze hiring during the process. I think it's to insulate from economic shock; nobody knows how bad each company may be hit.
In the same boat but more a DevOps type here (split time between developing and doing operations). Have some offers already due to being fortunate enough to have someone recommend me in those companies, i think that is still the best way to find a new job.
"Skilled" employees will be in for a rude awakening if this continues. Airlines are not building planes right? So they don't need as many skilled workers, they will also cut down aeronautic engineers, software engineers, accountants, lawyers, etc. There are lots of industries that support them too. If this continues, it will cascade like a domino effect.
More evidence that you never know, there is no such thing as a secure position so if you're dreaming of starting your own thing or venturing into something more unsecure, there is no reason to wait (unless you're saving up for it, or something like that)!
If you have the possibility you should definitely reach for it, the greatest risk in life is to never have tried to achieve your dreams.
Corporations are slow and predictable. In that sense they are reliable for income. As soon as they cut expenses like conference or travel or bonuses it is time to look for another job even if they say the cutbacks are temporary. You will have another corporate job with the 4-6 month window of the upcoming job cuts.
I would hope the Corona crisis would be the perfect opportunity to wind down this archaic sector and transition that part of the economy to something more future sustainable.
I think many people are still thinking of this as a temporary crisis that hopefully we can forget asap and turn back to "normal" as if this part of 2020 never happened. It is understandable as this crisis has not been easy on anyone.
However, I would dare to expect more from a long term policy perspective. There are many things that were unsustainable with our socio-economic lifestyle long before the Corona crisis. While we can not prevent the impacts on the individual people businesses, we could use the funds that are rightfully mobilized to aid them to shape a "new" economy that is more aligned with the coming climate crisis.
We did this in the past (also much too late) e.g. with the coal mining sector in Belgium. For a long time we tried to keep that activity alive just because 'jobs, jobs, jobs'. It took decades before politics was ready to stop trowing good money after bad, and create regional re-conversion funds to turn those local economies around and give them a 'new' economic activity model that did have a future.
This is why I would advocate a scenario that spend on those people/companies impacted in industries such as aviation to turn them towards to other more sustainable parts of the future economy rather than just keep poring in money to let them cling to an ever more precarious activity.
Data centers are much easier to turn carbon neutral though. "Just" switch out the electricity provider. Flying with something other than jet fuel is more of an existential risk to the industry.
Aviation is the one field where fossil fuels will stay around for a long time just do to the energy density and the fact that the plane gets lighter as you burn fuel. Almost any other industry can switch to mostly carbon neutral energy sources.
So if we want to travel long distances fast there really isn't much of a realistic option. Though short flights (1 to 2h) should be replaced by rail when it makes sense (no sea to cross etc)
That's not a realistic option outside Europe and parts of Asia. I'm in SF, the nearest major cities are LA (1h flight) and Seattle (1.5h flight). Those are 10h and 21h by train on a good day, respectively. On a bad day, double that.
Additionally, trains are only 40% or so more efficient in terms of pollution. I suspect in most of the world you're far better off taking the plane and putting the fare difference into carbon credits.
You just have a shitty rail system in most of US. The solution is to fix it not fly more.
Also trains are a lot more then 40% more efficient in terms of pollution. Eurostar for example 6g per km traveled while airplane is 100g (long haul flights much worse for short ones). Though electric train powered by coal can get to around 40g per km and even worse for diesel trains.
We have the track, just not the companies doing passenger service. The ones we used to have all went bankrupt during the great depression and disappeared. A similar story played out across the Americas in Canada, Brazil, and Argentina, all of which have expansive rail networks, but limited passenger service. As for efficiency, I'll go by amtrak's numbers [1], which claim to be 36% better than domestic air.
Moderate amounts of almost everything was sustainable.
Nothing is moderate about our current day consumption and extraction, and moderation is not compatible with our current socio-economic "growth or death" model.
I think we all now what he means. Short term leisure trips to the other side of the continent aren't sustainable and are only viable because tourism heavily subsidises plane tickets prices.
If tourism + aviation is profitable combined, then why should we care? It's like Sony is not profitable by selling play station hardware. But game business unit is profitable because subscription income covers the hardware loss.
> If tourism + aviation is profitable combined, then why should we care?
I'm not sure if this is a sarcastic comment but I'll bite: because it's a net loss for everyone in the long term ? I know many people stop at "will it make us richer ?" step but there are other things to consider. We're not in the 1800s anymore, we know about pollution and its long term effects for a while now.
On top of that tourism might bring short term money but it's built on completely unstable funnels that can collapse at any point (cue covid), then you're left with regions of the world which lost the majority of their industries to tourism and are incapable of surviving or adapting when they're hit by the slightest hardship.
Why is it a subsidy if people are paying full price for their tickets?
If you're looking for subsidies, check out the way jet fuel is taxed (usually at far lower rates than regular fuel) or implement a consistent emissions scheme. Not that either is likely for a while given the ongoing carnage in the industry.
Every time I've looked into supposed lack of jet fuel taxes, it seems to come down to taxing the driving of cars on roads via taxes on fuel. Fuel for agricultural or industrial use also doesn't contain such taxes, most places.
Which is not to say there aren't other subsidies for air travel, for example in keeping open the minor airports at which low-cost airlines often land. And money for manufacturers.
Worse, even. Fuel is heavily subsidised (In many EU countries there's no excise on fuel for aircraft, but all other transports pay them; in UAE and other oil-states, fuel is even "free" for local carriers). Airports are often kept aloft by (local) governments (Ryanair to Charleroi every X years: Want us to start paying you? Then we leave and you can close the airport. Good luck with the unemplyment). And ticketprices are subsidised (in EU at least) by not having VAT and other taxes on them.
Airtravel is a very heavily subsidised sector. As is train-travel and other public transport, but (I'm not expert, so this is merely hearsay) apparently airtravel is heavier subsidised than public transport.
If business travel could be cut to next-to-nothing, short flights could be electrical, longer flights can be partially or fully renewable fuel then perhaps we don’t have to give up the odd intercontinental leisure flight. At least one can hope.
The skies here in Portugal are a beautiful blue colour. Before, because of the stable air created by the Azores high pressure weather system, they would criss-crossed by the contrails of all the passenger jets flying over.
It's long term a fixable thing. E.g. electrical planes will make this more sustainable for short hops (i.e. most business travel). Whether that's battery or some kind of fuel cell is up for debate of course. Both might ultimately play a role.
The big realization with covid 19 however is that a lot of air travel is actually completely unnecessary. Businesses are adapting to having meetings online instead of in person and learning that they can work globally without having to bring people locally. I've now been on several projects where I worked with people on a daily basis that I never met in real life. This is becoming normal.
A long time ago, I worked in a multinational that definitely was spending a bit too much on ferrying people around the planet to attend meetings. The most extreme version of this that I witnessed was a bi-monthly "sprint" planning with 13 teams in one room flown from basically India, Europe, etc. to Chicago. And yes, this is just about the least agile form of scrum that I've ever encountered and also about as much of a waste of time and kerosene as you'd expect. Also, I've never seen that many post-its in 1 room after that meeting and hope I never have to deal with that level of corporate insanity again.
Without some decent advances in battery technology I have strong doubts about electric planes being common for commercial flights.
This is just based on the wh/weight ratio - lithium batteries are far heavier then oil based fuel per watt hour, and aviation is incredibly weight sensitive.
What matters is two things: range & cost (kwh, maintenance & overhauls). For that battery is becoming unbeatable on short hops and longer hops pretty soon after.
Basically if it flies cheaper, battery is going to win in the air as well. R&D done by hundreds of battery tech companies will help improve the range of already flying (or soon to fly) electrical planes to the point where the range becomes useful to somebody; or at least useful enough that the cost argument becomes decisive.
There are a few planes in the process of certification that have useful but modest range that use battery tech from a few years ago. The price of certification is that you have to pick some tech and stick with it for a few years. Successors to these planes with more recent tech would probably get about 1.5-2x the range. That's roughly what Bye Aviation and Eviation are talking about for successors to their current first generation tech. To be clear that's just swapping out tech they picked a few years ago for the kind of stuff that Tesla is talking about next month.
The fallacy in this argument is believing we need to match A320s, Boeing 787s, etc. specs to be able to match their cost per passenger. This is simply not true. Big jets get benefits out of fuel efficiency because fuel is stupendously expensive. That's literally the only reason to spend hundreds of million on a super complicated piece of technology that burns tens of thousands of $ of fuel per trip.
This is not the case for electrical planes. Bigger ones are actually less efficient and the smaller ones are ultimately going to be cheap enough that you can simply get more of those to match the passenger volume. At the list price of the Eviation Alice (900kwh, 700 miles, 9 passengers + 2 pilots) of 3.5M$, you can easily buy the 20 or so you'd need to transport the number of passengers you'd typically cram in a A320 and still save a bit of cash. Eviation is not likely to ship the kind of volumes to allow airlines to make that kind of choice any time soon. But think autonomous planes flying much further and cheaper in a few decades and you get the picture. At some point, A320s stop making sense. It's mostly a matter of volume production and certification. Battery tech improvements during the time it will take to do that will help but are far less essential and partially already a done deal. More is better though; or rather less is more in terms of cost.
I agree that current levels of flying are likely excessive and unsustainable. But I think it's important to ask the right questions and not just cry out 'shut it down'.
> Air travel is ecologically unsustainable.
Too much air travel is ecologically unsustainable. But then again, that's more or less a tautology.
What is interesting it to work out how much air travel is sustainable.
> This archaic sector and transition that part of the economy to something more future sustainable.
CO2 tax on airline tickets - possibly a cap-and-trade system where every person in a country get N-many carbon credits they can trade in a free market to people that want to fly more-often?
A problem any of this introduces is that (modern) airline travel still has comparable CO2-per-passenger-mile values compared to driving by car[1], so it’s not fair to say that flying is worst (nor the best) way to travel,]. I understand that, I’m general, we should still prefer people fly to Disney World in the summer than drive - or take a cruise ship - as shipping has the worst emissions-per-passenger-mile due to heavy use of “bunker fuel”.
[1]According to Wikipedia’s page on aircraft economy. Ctrl+F for “comparison to ground transport”.
For the Netherlands, being a flight hub is (considered to be) a massive boost to the economy. Hence we want KLM to keep flying so that Amsterdam remains a flight-hub.
Who's 'we'? There are three factions in this debate in the Netherlands.
Most Dutch couldn't care less about KLM-Air France since it stopped being the national airline (nostalgia aside, KLM-Air France is just another big international airline). A large part of this group just wants cheap tickets to sunny holiday locations, and usually fly with price-fighters like EasyJet (not KLM-Air France).
Some more commercially minded folk do feel that we need a strong KLM-Air France and have its hub of Schiphol airport grow to act as the engine block of our economy.
Then there is the non-negligible number of Dutch who would like to look forward to a future that is more sustainable than what we have now, and who feel that we could really do with a little less flying overall. Also that the boost-to-the-economy argument is tenuous at best. The opposition to opening Lelystad Airport as an annex for mainport Schiphol is proof that this is not just a fringe group of NIMBY's.
The people who were able to pump billions of EUR into KLM. So basically VVD. It doesn't really seem to matter that others have a different opinion. What matters is that billions go into an unsustainable company, were I mean unsustainable on basis of money.
Follow the money did an article on KLM. Giving money to KLM is like throwing your money away, it such a poor investment. It's worse than just donating. Instead of that you could also e.g. invest that money in the off-gas transition. Meaning, insulate houses. That would help the economy, help the ecological goals, etc. Instead, KLM gets money but in a weird way, all kinds of unrealistic conditions.
It's interesting how it doesn't make sense to give KLM money either ecological wise, nor economical. Still, they get billions.
The government in general, and to a certain extent me as-well (despite me voting left of D66).
The fact that Schiphol is a major hub helps make us a bigger player in international trade. It helps setting up main offices here (which bring in decent tax, and maybe some jobs too).
In general, on this issue, I trust the VVD to get the economic side somewhat correct. They are pretty smart people, and not totally evil. And they care a lot about the economic side. So I tend to believe them when they say 'this will be good for the economy'. Especially when they come up with an underlying mechanism that seems quite plausible to me.
No. Air travel is about 5% of GHG emissions. A lot of the remaining 95% can be gotten rid of without giving up any quality of life. We can keep air travel, no problem.
81 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] threadNon-skilled employees are for a tough ride as a crisis is when most people loses their jobs, and it is when it is more difficult to find a new one.
But, this is appalling news for many highly specialized employees. Many of them had a career in fly-related fields.
To have skills on an industry that suddenly disappears under your feet is the nightmare of any skilled worker.
The software industry slowly re-invents itself, and one needs to keep up to date. But, it has never been such a turning point so fast and that seems that is going to last for long.
Case in point: many European countries with safety nets are just not a cruel place to be at this time.
I think it makes sense for KLM to lay off those people. A business cannot keep on people if there is no work for them.
Q: What's the difference between capitalism and communism? A: In capitalism, man exploits fellow man. In socialism, it's exactly the opposite.
(Note: original as in, the question was phrased in terms of what's the difference, and the answer famously began with "in capitalism, man exploits fellow man", which was a standard formulation of propaganda texts. There are, of course, countless variants, as with any joke.)
It was a tongue-in-cheek way of pointing out that, even though they claimed to have eradicated the exploitation of workers by the owners of the means of production, all that Communist regimes of the time had achieved was to replace it with the exploitation of workers by the state, for the benefit of a small elite that ran the whole system. Once you cut through the propaganda and the jargon, workers were still being exploited (in the Marxist sense) by a small group of wealthy individuals.
The exploitation of man by fellow man was a pretty famous, and often-invoked part of Marxist doctrine, and one of the first things that were covered as part of political education courses in schools, workplaces and so on. Besides making the point above, it also mocked the stiff, pseudo-scientific Marxist-Leninist propaganda speak. Most of the people in charge of "political education" were uneducated party activists -- the kind of people who would, indeed, say that "in capitalism, man exploits fellow man, whereas in socialism, it's exactly the opposite" with a straight face, without understanding the double-entendre.
Does it matter? Also, there were loads of techs/devs hired for year 2000 bugfixing. After 2000 it took a while to find something else for them or let them go. Quite a huge amount could not find anything to do after 2000.
Same story for many of our clients: telecom firms, financial services firms
People remember 2000 as a tech startup bubble burst. But it was just as much a bubble burst for telecom (AT&T, Global Crossing, Lucent, others), financial services firms, and consultancies.
> based on the current measures, which include the non-renewal of temporary contracts (1,500 FTEs) and the Voluntarily Departure Scheme (2,000 FTEs). Additionally, natural attrition (500 FTEs) through retirement and the like
Voluntarily Departure Scheme will most likely provide a nice compensation package and people nearing retirement will simply not be replaced by new hires.
It would be tremendously helpful for layoff notices to improve on the communications of this point, as folks who can be provided a gentle glidepath to retirement are in a different situation than someone who still has many years or decades ahead of them in the workforce and is thrown into a pandemic job market.
Seperately, I'm a developer and I stopped working in March due to reasons unrelated to COVID-19 and now I'm finding it exceptionally hard to get back in and find a job.
I was interviewing with a few companies and all but 1 froze hiring during the process. I think it's to insulate from economic shock; nobody knows how bad each company may be hit.
Still sucks when you can’t get a job. I too thought because I was a smart web developer that I would always be able to make so. Oops.
If you have the possibility you should definitely reach for it, the greatest risk in life is to never have tried to achieve your dreams.
becoming an entrepreneur gives you the illusion of freedom.
I would hope the Corona crisis would be the perfect opportunity to wind down this archaic sector and transition that part of the economy to something more future sustainable.
> Aviation could consume a quarter of 1.5C carbon budget by 2050
https://www.carbonbrief.org/aviation-consume-quarter-carbon-...
However, I would dare to expect more from a long term policy perspective. There are many things that were unsustainable with our socio-economic lifestyle long before the Corona crisis. While we can not prevent the impacts on the individual people businesses, we could use the funds that are rightfully mobilized to aid them to shape a "new" economy that is more aligned with the coming climate crisis.
We did this in the past (also much too late) e.g. with the coal mining sector in Belgium. For a long time we tried to keep that activity alive just because 'jobs, jobs, jobs'. It took decades before politics was ready to stop trowing good money after bad, and create regional re-conversion funds to turn those local economies around and give them a 'new' economic activity model that did have a future.
This is why I would advocate a scenario that spend on those people/companies impacted in industries such as aviation to turn them towards to other more sustainable parts of the future economy rather than just keep poring in money to let them cling to an ever more precarious activity.
The data centre industry emits as much CO2 as aviation, see how far you get on here proposing that we need to do less computing, to save the planet!
I didn’t even mention the cost of desktop computing running all that shitty JavaScript. Probably at least as much CO2 again from just the ads.
So if we want to travel long distances fast there really isn't much of a realistic option. Though short flights (1 to 2h) should be replaced by rail when it makes sense (no sea to cross etc)
https://www.thelocal.se/20180313/swedens-forests-could-fuel-...
Also trains are a lot more then 40% more efficient in terms of pollution. Eurostar for example 6g per km traveled while airplane is 100g (long haul flights much worse for short ones). Though electric train powered by coal can get to around 40g per km and even worse for diesel trains.
[1] https://www.amtrak.com/travel-green
There, I've made an equally unnuanced statement, now what?
I don't think things are that black and white. A moderate amount of air travel is not unsustainable per se, I would think.
Nothing is moderate about our current day consumption and extraction, and moderation is not compatible with our current socio-economic "growth or death" model.
Thankfully, birth rates rapidly decline as nations develop. It's a problem that fixes itself. But it is a problem.
I'm not sure if this is a sarcastic comment but I'll bite: because it's a net loss for everyone in the long term ? I know many people stop at "will it make us richer ?" step but there are other things to consider. We're not in the 1800s anymore, we know about pollution and its long term effects for a while now.
On top of that tourism might bring short term money but it's built on completely unstable funnels that can collapse at any point (cue covid), then you're left with regions of the world which lost the majority of their industries to tourism and are incapable of surviving or adapting when they're hit by the slightest hardship.
Everybody chips in for subsidies, then AirBNB hosts reap the profit and raise rent for locals. Yay!
If you're looking for subsidies, check out the way jet fuel is taxed (usually at far lower rates than regular fuel) or implement a consistent emissions scheme. Not that either is likely for a while given the ongoing carnage in the industry.
Which is not to say there aren't other subsidies for air travel, for example in keeping open the minor airports at which low-cost airlines often land. And money for manufacturers.
Airtravel is a very heavily subsidised sector. As is train-travel and other public transport, but (I'm not expert, so this is merely hearsay) apparently airtravel is heavier subsidised than public transport.
He literally used the expression "to wind down":
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/wind-dow...
"if a business, situation, activity, etc. winds down, or is wound down, it gradually ends"
So I think he meant there should be no more air travel at all.
> Green Party supporters 'most likely' to fly long-haul
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/Green-Party-supporte...
The big realization with covid 19 however is that a lot of air travel is actually completely unnecessary. Businesses are adapting to having meetings online instead of in person and learning that they can work globally without having to bring people locally. I've now been on several projects where I worked with people on a daily basis that I never met in real life. This is becoming normal.
A long time ago, I worked in a multinational that definitely was spending a bit too much on ferrying people around the planet to attend meetings. The most extreme version of this that I witnessed was a bi-monthly "sprint" planning with 13 teams in one room flown from basically India, Europe, etc. to Chicago. And yes, this is just about the least agile form of scrum that I've ever encountered and also about as much of a waste of time and kerosene as you'd expect. Also, I've never seen that many post-its in 1 room after that meeting and hope I never have to deal with that level of corporate insanity again.
This is just based on the wh/weight ratio - lithium batteries are far heavier then oil based fuel per watt hour, and aviation is incredibly weight sensitive.
Basically if it flies cheaper, battery is going to win in the air as well. R&D done by hundreds of battery tech companies will help improve the range of already flying (or soon to fly) electrical planes to the point where the range becomes useful to somebody; or at least useful enough that the cost argument becomes decisive.
There are a few planes in the process of certification that have useful but modest range that use battery tech from a few years ago. The price of certification is that you have to pick some tech and stick with it for a few years. Successors to these planes with more recent tech would probably get about 1.5-2x the range. That's roughly what Bye Aviation and Eviation are talking about for successors to their current first generation tech. To be clear that's just swapping out tech they picked a few years ago for the kind of stuff that Tesla is talking about next month.
The fallacy in this argument is believing we need to match A320s, Boeing 787s, etc. specs to be able to match their cost per passenger. This is simply not true. Big jets get benefits out of fuel efficiency because fuel is stupendously expensive. That's literally the only reason to spend hundreds of million on a super complicated piece of technology that burns tens of thousands of $ of fuel per trip.
This is not the case for electrical planes. Bigger ones are actually less efficient and the smaller ones are ultimately going to be cheap enough that you can simply get more of those to match the passenger volume. At the list price of the Eviation Alice (900kwh, 700 miles, 9 passengers + 2 pilots) of 3.5M$, you can easily buy the 20 or so you'd need to transport the number of passengers you'd typically cram in a A320 and still save a bit of cash. Eviation is not likely to ship the kind of volumes to allow airlines to make that kind of choice any time soon. But think autonomous planes flying much further and cheaper in a few decades and you get the picture. At some point, A320s stop making sense. It's mostly a matter of volume production and certification. Battery tech improvements during the time it will take to do that will help but are far less essential and partially already a done deal. More is better though; or rather less is more in terms of cost.
> Air travel is ecologically unsustainable.
Too much air travel is ecologically unsustainable. But then again, that's more or less a tautology.
What is interesting it to work out how much air travel is sustainable.
> This archaic sector and transition that part of the economy to something more future sustainable.
Sounds good to me. What is that something?
All-electric high-speed rail?
Minimum standards for aircraft emissions?
CO2 tax on airline tickets - possibly a cap-and-trade system where every person in a country get N-many carbon credits they can trade in a free market to people that want to fly more-often?
A problem any of this introduces is that (modern) airline travel still has comparable CO2-per-passenger-mile values compared to driving by car[1], so it’s not fair to say that flying is worst (nor the best) way to travel,]. I understand that, I’m general, we should still prefer people fly to Disney World in the summer than drive - or take a cruise ship - as shipping has the worst emissions-per-passenger-mile due to heavy use of “bunker fuel”.
[1]According to Wikipedia’s page on aircraft economy. Ctrl+F for “comparison to ground transport”.
Most Dutch couldn't care less about KLM-Air France since it stopped being the national airline (nostalgia aside, KLM-Air France is just another big international airline). A large part of this group just wants cheap tickets to sunny holiday locations, and usually fly with price-fighters like EasyJet (not KLM-Air France).
Some more commercially minded folk do feel that we need a strong KLM-Air France and have its hub of Schiphol airport grow to act as the engine block of our economy.
Then there is the non-negligible number of Dutch who would like to look forward to a future that is more sustainable than what we have now, and who feel that we could really do with a little less flying overall. Also that the boost-to-the-economy argument is tenuous at best. The opposition to opening Lelystad Airport as an annex for mainport Schiphol is proof that this is not just a fringe group of NIMBY's.
Follow the money did an article on KLM. Giving money to KLM is like throwing your money away, it such a poor investment. It's worse than just donating. Instead of that you could also e.g. invest that money in the off-gas transition. Meaning, insulate houses. That would help the economy, help the ecological goals, etc. Instead, KLM gets money but in a weird way, all kinds of unrealistic conditions.
It's interesting how it doesn't make sense to give KLM money either ecological wise, nor economical. Still, they get billions.
The fact that Schiphol is a major hub helps make us a bigger player in international trade. It helps setting up main offices here (which bring in decent tax, and maybe some jobs too).
In general, on this issue, I trust the VVD to get the economic side somewhat correct. They are pretty smart people, and not totally evil. And they care a lot about the economic side. So I tend to believe them when they say 'this will be good for the economy'. Especially when they come up with an underlying mechanism that seems quite plausible to me.
No. Air travel is about 5% of GHG emissions. A lot of the remaining 95% can be gotten rid of without giving up any quality of life. We can keep air travel, no problem.
KLM is the oldest still operating airline, it'd be crazy if they go bankrupt too!