After the dust has almost settled, we take a look at the impact of the Ash Crisis on the travel industry, travellers and the environment.
Stranded jets during the air space closure. Image by Travel Aficionado
- Total cost to airlines: According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) airlines lost more than US$1.7bn in revenue during the six day air space closure. This doesn’t count additional costs incurred of compensation to passengers (many of which are still being settled), nor does it include the relative benefit of reduced operational costs due to flights not being run (reduced fuel consumption for example)
- Total passengers affected: According to the EU transport commissioner, over 10 million passengers were affected when approximately 95,000 flights were cancelled during the initial six days of cancellations alone.
- Total carbon dioxide emissions avoided from cancelled flights alone was an astonishing (and approximated) 1.6 million tonnes during the six day continuous air space closure alone. [That's based on assuming approximately 60% of EU flights were cancelled and using data from the 2009 EC GHG inventory report (www.eea.europa.eu/publications/european-community-greenhouse-gas-inventory-2009)]. To put this in perspective, according to the BBC, the average Briton is responsible for 3.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year. In practice, during the crisis many passengers took alternative flight routes home, often adding to their carbon footprint, but those who took a train home instead would have cut their footprint to by at least 75%. People who hired a car and drove all the way home would have roughly halved their carbon emissions, based on two people sharing. Any carbon dioxide emissions saved by alternative transport should be offset against emissions from the volcano itself, estimates of which vary wildly, with the upper end being quoted as 300 thousand tonnes CO2 per day.
Aside of massive disruptions to plans, one of the biggest frustrations for travellers during the period was not knowing where to get information on alternative routes. Judging by the interest that our own site received during this period, the demand for a search engine that answers the simple question “how do I get from A to B” is stronger than ever. Flight engines are only able to compare routes between international air terminals, and travellers find it difficult to determine the accessibility of alternative airports, or options for taking the train or ferry instead.
With Zoombu you simply tell us your origin and destination and the dates you want to travel and we do the hard work of searching the options for you, recommending door-to-door routes involving different modes of transport. Try it out and tell us what you think!
Lots of you wanted to run one way searches during the ash incidents, whereas Zoombu currently searches for the outbound and return journeys – the single search feature is in the pipeline. The beta version currently serves UK outbound travellers, but we’ll be expanding to serve other markets very soon (just in case Eyjafjoell or one of it’s cousins comes back for more…).
- Posted by Rachel
