Upgraded: Awareness of airlines’ crappy recycling efforts
I have always bristled at the toss-everything-in-the-bag trash collection aboard US-based airlines. (It’s a striking contrast from European carriers, for example.) So I’m glad to see some light shining on the recycling practices — or lack thereof — of American carriers. The best of the bunch: Delta and Virgin America, who earn a grade of B- from Green America (pdf). Failing grades: United and US Airways. See the FastCompany roundup here.

Upgraded: Wifi on Alaska Airlines
Alaska Airlines will put wi-fi on all its aircraft, using Aircell’s service, which is sold under the Gogo name.

Downgraded: Rental car deals
Blame Toyota. The carmaker’s huge recall took out about 8% of vehicles of the American rental car fleet. Yes, recall repairs are being done, but the rates aren’t pulling back too quickly. That is, unless you’re doing a one-way rental from Florida to … well, anywhere.

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Downgraded: Airborne
I’ve always found the boxes of Airborne nutritional supplements to be silly (a healthcare product that proudly proclaims it’s “created by a schoolteacher!”). But now, they’ve been forced to change their packaging. Gone are the germs, the sick people, and the claim to prevent inflight illness.

Downgraded: Airline maintenance
A frightening report on outsourced aircraft maintenance companies, where some staff can’t read the instructions. Shudder… (via Consumerist)

Downgraded: First class on Qantas
Like everyone else, Australia’s Qantas is feeling the pinch. First class has been removed from flights to San Francisco, Buenos Aires and Melbourne-Hong Kong-London routes. Not much of a loss, really, since business class is where the action is.

Upgraded: the environment
A positive side effect of the economic slowdown: Fewer flights means less pollution.

Upgraded: US Airways luggage delivery
The passengers whose flight landed in the Hudson River have gotten their luggage and belongings back, including things left behind on the seats. Nice! I just hope that getting your stuff doesn’t always require such dramatic landings…

Upgraded: Momondo
Danish airfare aggregator (reviewed here previously) just got an upgrade, by including Ryanair fares in its searches. That’s a big change for the ultra-discounter, which has kept its fares exclusively on its own website until now.

Downgraded: Exit rows on Qantas
Qantas will start charging an extra fee for the exit rows. They’re not the first, but still, annoying. (Thanks, Rob!)

Downgraded: Business sense
If a business model failed miserably for Skybus, I’m sure it’ll work just fine a year later, in a significantly worse financial climate, right? Right? JetAmerica, a new startup, is trying out the Skybus model themselves, with 9 seats for $9 on every flight. Minneapolis and Newark are the biggest destinations, but the operations are run through Toledo. Cranky has the rundown. Who wants to start the bankruptcy countdown pool?

Global warming has the residents of the Maldives worried. Their entire country has a maximum five feet elevation of over sea level. And their new government has a plan to fix it. But if you’re interested in experiencing the country’s pristine waters, you may want to make plans to visit now rather than later:

The Maldives will begin to divert a portion of the country’s billion-dollar annual tourist revenue into buying a new homeland – as an insurance policy against climate change that threatens to turn the 300,000 islanders into environmental refugees, the country’s first democratically elected president has told the Guardian.

…Sri Lanka and India were targets because they had similar cultures, cuisines and climates. Australia was also being considered because of the amount of unoccupied land available.

“We do not want to leave the Maldives, but we also do not want to be climate refugees living in tents for decades,” he said.

Environmentalists say the issue raises the question of what rights citizens have if their homeland no longer exists. “It’s an unprecedented wake-up call,” said Tom Picken, head of international climate change at Friends of the Earth. “The Maldives is left to fend for itself. It is a victim of climate change caused by rich countries.”

Most of the population of the Maldives is concentrated on one island — Male — which contrasts with the rest of the resort-studded archipelago. Check out this density:

And for some scale, click here to see the island in context — next to the airport.

Carbon footprint measurers take note: Chicago O’Hare is taking steps to reduce the fuel burned by aircraft while they’re still on the ground.

It’s a worthy target: The jet fuel spent by commercial aircraft when taxiing can run in the hundreds of gallons if the plane idles long enough. For every minute the plane isn’t in the air, but the engines are on, it’s essentially wasted energy. That’s a lot of carbon — and a lot of money. Enter the entrepreneurs:

[Executives at UST Aviation Services, the company providing towing services at O'Hare,] think they have a better idea and hope the airlines will let the firm do the driving between O’Hare passenger terminals and maintenance hangars. [emphasis added]

UST has purchased a high-speed push tractor that lifts a plane’s nose gear off the tarmac and tows the jet with the plane’s engines off.

The German-made tractor burns less than a half-gallon of diesel fuel per minute, compared with almost 6 gallons of the more expensive jet fuel that a 757 burns each minute while taxiing, said Mayank Tripathi, president of UST.

This is similar to something Richard Branson was pitching to Chicago and other airports a couple years ago. But Branson wanted planes towed from the gate to the runway. Gate-to-runway towing is unfortunately laden with risk of delays. The fuel savings only actually happen if the plane is able to take off immediately. If there’s a line-up, you need a huge army of tugs (which isn’t economical) or the plane has to fire up the engines to inch forward, which negates any carbon benefit.

Towing a plane to the hangar isn’t nearly as impactful as towing to the runway would be, but still, it’s a good step!

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Reader Michelle sends in a link about the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey’s plan to make the outlying Stewart Airport “carbon-negative.” Carbon-negative? So flying from Stewart actually HELPS the environment? Uhh, yeah.

In reality, the airport would offset the carbon dioxide produced on its premises by planting forests wholesale. All well and good. But is it realistic to expect an airport to counteract all of the fossil fuel burning machines that grace its pavement? And then some?

I don’t buy it. Airports aren’t exactly minty-fresh. Never have been, and as long as their tenants burn hydrocarbons, they won’t be. Offsetting the pollution they create is an honorable goal, but face it, that’s a lot of trees. Especially if the airport is expected to grow.

And it doesn’t help the local environment. “People who live around Stewart have concerns that expanded operations will exacerbate air and noise pollution and fuel sprawling development.” Indeed, I’m sure they will. And planting trees fifty, a hundred, or a thousand miles away won’t fix that.

This is a “greenwashing” PR stunt.

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If you invest in socially-responsible mutual funds, you may not be investing (however indirectly) in airlines much longer. And it has nothing to do with labor practices, if that’s where your mind is drifting.

Fund manager Standard Life is dropping airlines from its “ethical” portfolios:

Airlines have been labelled unethical by one of Britain’s biggest investment firms, which plans them to blacklist them alongside arms dealers, pornographers and animal-testing laboratories.

Concern over the millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide produced by commercial aircraft has prompted the Edinburgh-based Standard Life to cease investing in carriers such as British Airways, Ryanair and EasyJet on behalf of tens of thousands of customers of its ethical funds.

Sure, the parallel with arms dealers and pornographers is intentionally inflammatory, and makes great headlines. And if the funds have an environmental focus, then the exclusion makes sense. Air travel isn’t without its carbon impact (though short-hop airlines like Ryanair presumably have a greater negative impact than long-haul airlines like British Airways…)

And let’s not forget that airlines have been pretty lousy long-term investments. But that’s not ethics, that’s business.

But above all, this highlights how different the discourse of travel is in Europe and America, despite perpetually increasing environmental awareness among Americans. Sure, airlines spew plenty of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but this is barely an issue in the US.

Ethical investment? Or a distasteful stain on any self-respecting person’s portfolio? Hit the comments.

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