THE GREAT POLLUTERS

We are willing to live with their pollution, but we can't smoke inside

Airplanes are wonderful machines. Masterpieces of advanced engineering, airplanes are the realization of the greatest human dream: to fly.
The immortal Leonardo Da Vinci dedicated a considerable part of his life to make this dream come true. His attempts failed mainly because he did not have a device capable of generating enough power to propel his machines: the engine.

Thanks to airplanes, today our large planet has become a small place, for in a few hours we can accomplish journeys that would have taken
months just a century ago.

As in everything, however, there is a price to pay. In this case, pollution. It is ironic that there is so much emphasis on preventing smoking inside airplanes and at airports, while airlines conveniently forget to mention the airplane's contribution to environmental disaster.

Most people are unaware of the level of pollution created by airplanes. Most likely, if they were they still would be willing to pay the environmental price of airplanes in exchange for the advantages of air travel. The point here is that North American airlines are unwilling to accommodate smokers, while dumping hundreds of millions of tons in the air that everybody breathes. No position could be more schizophrenic. Except the one of government, of course.

We have applied the figures of the study to Vancouver International Airport traffic statistics. Even though these statistics provide a breakdown of airplane categories (heavy, light, piston, etc.), the specific breakdown of aircraft model is not provided. Therefore, assumptions have to be made. We will be very conservative in our calculations, that is -- in this case - - optimistic.

For example, there is a tremendous difference between the emissions of an older Boeing 747- 200, and the emissions of a modern 747-400. The 747-400 is cleaner than its predecessors by orders of magnitude. The same applies for a lighter carrier, for example the McDonnel Douglas DC9-80. Nevertheless, we will assume that 50% of all the larger carriers of the heavy class are as clean as the 747-400, and the other 50% -- the smaller carriers of the same class -- are as clean as a DC9-80! Also, it has to be remembered that -- as in automobiles -- the aircraft emissions vary from unit to unit, depending on many factors such as age, payload, maintenance, etc. Unlike the anti-smoking propagandists, we want to err on the side of underestimation, not exaggeration. when considering factors such as those mentioned above.

Thus, this analysis is not meant to be a precise one, but merely intended to point out the magnitude of airplane emissions with some meaningful figures for the layman. The entire study from which these figures have been extrapolated is available for down load at this site.

What is an LTO?

LTO is an acronym for Landing Take Off cycle. It represents the cycle an airplane goes through during landing and take off. Specifically:

• Taxi and idle-out
• Takeoff
• Taxi and idle-in
• Climb-out
• Approach

As one can see, the total number of LTOs for all categories is much higher than the number of heavy passenger LTOs alone. For simplicity, we shall leave to the curious reader the option of down loading the study to calculate the total emissions for himself, while we focus on the most popular category of airplanes.

So, let us see the LTO emissions of a Boeing 747-400 (engines: PW4056), and the emissions of a McDonnel Douglas DC9-80 (engines: JT80-217C)

Since we want to concern ourselves mainly with the emissions of an airplane while it is on the ground (where the heaviest concentration of pollutants exists), it is necessary to further reduce these figures by 50% (see above), thus the total measured ground emissions are about 48.5 lbs.

This does not seem much, if we consider the size and the power of these carriers. However, let us now consider the daily number of LTOs at the Vancouver airport:

Then let's multiply the daily LTOs by the emission weight: 278 x 48.5 = 13,483 lbs per day ground emissions.

Now it is time to remember some important consideration, as well as making some new ones:

• The airplanes considered employ new, environmentally friendly technology. New airplanes are only a fraction of any fleet.
• An older airplane emits over 2 times the amount of a new one (example: a 747-400 emits 149.11 lbs/LTO; a 747-200: 325.27 lbs)
• Only ground emissions have been considered. A large part of the heavy end of the aloft emissions eventually falls on the airport grounds.
• No other air craft categories have been considered in the above simple calculation.
• All the emission generated by ground support & service vehicles have not been considered.
• Evaporative emissions of the raw fuel have not been considered.
• Emissions from electric power production have not been considered.

Isn't it ironic that the "smoke-free", "clean air" of the Vancouver Airport facilities is pumped in from this kind of outside environment? Hmmm... let's see... how many cigarettes per hour does that equate to?

(This is based upon the assumption that all the 21 milligrams consituting the average emission of a cigarette are released in the atmosphere as opposed to being partially retained by the body.)

Except for nicotine, the byproducts of burning aircraft fuel and burning cigarettes are the same. The difference is one of scale -- tons versus milligrams.

One can't help but wonder what Vancouver's Dr. Blatherwick, the vitriolic smokers rights-crushing crusader has to say about this! What do you think, sir, should we ban airplanes from such public place as the Vancouver International Airport? Where is the protection for travelling children? What about lung cancer? What if we combine these figures with the 324,500 metric tonnes of automotive emissions in the Lower Mainland each year? Should we ban cars too?

Perhaps you would respond that cars and airplanes are not in your field of competence. In view of these figures, one must wonder if there is any competence at all when doctors step into the public policy field.

By the way, we have often been asked: "how many cigarettes equal the take off of an airplane?"

Well, let us say that the brand new, absolutely-smoke-free Canadian Airlines 747-400 leaves behind the equivalent of 3,224,000 cigarettes.
However, if enough smokers boycott Canadian, so that business is so bad that they are forced to go back to older 747-200s, then our heroic anti-smoking airline's airplanes will smoke out over 7,000,000 cigarettes per LTO! But this, of course, will be dismissed as irrelevant.

So much for the stupidity of the Health Nazis.