Empty passenger jets have been flying from Cardiff to Heathrow six times every week, enraging green activists by polluting the environment unnecessarily.
Each 140-mile journey made by the British Mediterranean Airways (BMed) planes releases more than five tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere.
Since October 2006, the airline has maintained these ‘ghost flights’ in an effort to hold onto its valuable landing slots at Heathrow Airport.
BMed has undertaken this unusual loss-making exercise due to Heathrow’s implementation of the internationally recognised ‘Use it or Lose it’ rule when allocating its landing slots.
An airline must use at least 80% of its allocation over a six-month period, or risk seeing competitors take over its under-used slots.
BMed started the empty flights after it had to terminate its service to Tashkent in Uzbekistan following potentially dangerous civil unrest.
BMed admitted that the situation was ‘not ideal’, and claimed that it would not be financially viable to run a passenger service for only a few months.
David Richardson, BMed chief executive, said: “Since BMed intends to operate the slot on revenue services during the 2007 summer and winter seasons, it was necessary to preserve the slot. Flights to Cardiff represented the most cost-effective way to do this.”
Environmental campaigners claim that the air tax system needs to be changed in order to stop these types of flights from continuing.
