New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport is partnering with Delta Air Lines to get federal approval for a self-driving robot taxi that would haul planes around to their runways without requiring them to consume their own jet fuel, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced.
Jet fuel is both very expensive and very bad for our planet, which is why JFK Airport wants the planes arriving there to use as little of it as possible. “The idea behind (the initiative) is to reduce fuel burn at an airport, which is one of the biggest contributors to CO2 emissions,” said Ralph Tamburro, a Port Authority employee who specializes in airspace modernization.
Even if the robot taxis receive federal approval, it would not compensate for the enormous amount of jet fuel that airplanes burn during takeoff and in flight. Tamburro estimated that the robotaxi system could save 500 pounds of jet fuel per flight — which certainly sounds like a lot until you consider that a single direct flight from, say, New York to London burns around 240,000 pounds of aviation fuel.
Which of the following sustainable changes would make you most likely to choose a particular airline?
Uses cleaner fuel
Reduce waste in flight
Makes it easy to choose travel routes with low emissions
I don’t care about durability when I fly
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This is why a whopping 2.5% of our total planetary overheating air pollution comes from the commercial aviation sector, which has accounted for 4% of the total planetary overheating that has happened so far, according to Our world in data. This despite the fact that only around 10% of the people on earth fly in a plane each year.
If that sounds like a lot of air pollution per passenger, it’s nothing compared to how much pollution per passenger is produced by private flights. As just one example, Bill Gates was reported to have taken 392 private flights — more than one per day — only 2022. (He called this habit his “guilty pleasure.”)
While self-driving air taxis reducing total pollution per flight by 0.2% is great, it is clear that we will never meaningfully reduce emissions from this sector until super rich prevented from using it with complete disregard for the rest of the planet.
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