Travel, throughout the world had increased immensely in the last few decades. We are able to travel to places we never dreamed about. When weighing up the options of various modes of transport, there is a lot to consider when you have the environment in mind. The whole issue of air travel and the environment has become the subject of enormous scrutiny recently but there are times when flying is simply the only practical way to travel.

Even though much of the criticism aimed at aviation applies fairly generally to the industry as a whole, all airlines are not the same and in certain aspects some are more eco-friendly than others. While it is not always easy or, indeed, possible to pick and choose your carrier, sometimes the opportunity will arise for the eco-friendly low cost traveller to make that choice – but how do you go about making that decision? Fortunately, there are a few key areas to consider which could make a big difference in helping you arrive at your selection.

If we acknowledge that low cost airlines, as a whole are more eco-friendly then that narrows down our choice fairly easily. For a start we can look at some advantages of travelling with low cost airlines and therefore deduct that they cut unnecessary waste, thereby saving the environment to some extent. Not to mention that they are considerably safer to fly with.

• Low Cost and Budget: The biggest reason why budget airlines are so popular is that you arrive at your destination just as fast as a much more expensive, full priced airline for a fraction of the price
• Convenient online booking: Selling tickets online is not only good for the airline but also much more convenient for the customer too – a couple of clicks and you’re done, imagine the carbon emissions saved from working online
• You only pay for what you want: Food and drink are not free on budget flights, which is no problem on short hops. On longer flights, budget airlines provide blankets, entertainment sets and hot meals all for a fee. If you’ve thought ahead, you can save on all of these costs.
• Frequent special fares with virtually free flights: Budget airlines run frequent promotions where they slash their ticket prices even further for a limited time period.
• Airports offering Low Cost Carrier Terminals: Budget airlines fly to more obscure airports to lessen landing fees, but the side effect can be that the airport can be a couple of hours journey away from the actual destination. Yet, with growing demands, rail lines and bus services are created to ease traffic flow. A fantastic new trend is the building of terminals specifically for budget airlines at existing airport locations – Bordeaux, France has recently opened Billi, a Low Cost Carrier Terminal that provide basic facilities and still lets passengers take advantage of the existing travel services into the city. They also offer a 25 minute transit time, perfect for business travelers on the go.
• Restricted baggage allowance: Although this can be seen as a disadvantage, this helps low cost travelers to plan ahead to stick to the luggage allowance. Most budget airlines allow 15kgs of luggage. Remember that the more overall luggage taken on board by customers, the higher the fuel usage and therefore the more CO2 emissions released

Here are some of the safety aspects and benefits of low cost, budget carriers.

• Brand New Planes
  • Most budget airlines only came into existence in the last decade, and as a result have some of the newest models of airplanes currently in service which have the latest safety mechanisms and procedures.
• Streamlined maintenance
  • As well as having new planes, budget airlines also typically use only one model of plane. The Boeing 737 is the most popular aircraft used by low cost carriers around the world. By only having one model of aircraft in their fleet, budget airlines streamline their maintenance and repair costs and make staff training much easier, rather than having several different types of older airplane in a legacy fleet to maintain, each with their own idiosyncrasies.
• Keeping A Flawless Safety Record
  • The perception that budget flights are inherently less safe than full service flights is a difficult one for low cost carriers to erase, so budget airlines are hyper sensitive about maintaining their reputation and flight safety record. They realize that an accident would be a disaster for their company in every sense of the word. As such, budget airlines strive to have flawless safety records rather than considering any compromise on safety in order to cut costs.
  • The world’s oldest budget airline, America’s Southwest, has never had a crash in 40 years of operation – that’s over 12 million flights. South West pioneered much of the uniform way of running an airline with the same planes and streamlined procedures which has been adopted as the blueprint for virtually every other budget airline. The UK’s two biggest budget flight operators, Ryanair and Easyjet, have also never suffered a crash throughout their company history.

Samantha Minogue

Editorial Director