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Cheap flights boom over, says BA chief as oil hits new high
Dan Milmo, The Guardian
Britain’s leading airline boss declared the era of cheap flights over yesterday as the price of oil hit a record high for the third day running.
Willie Walsh, the boss of British Airways, said the soaring cost of oil allied to global economic uncertainty would force airlines to raise fares in a scramble for survival that will see many of them go bust.
After a day of heavy trading oil rose to $135 a barrel as fears over supply shortages in the US sparked more buying. A year ago a barrel of oil cost just $65 but the price has risen relentlessly, driven by demand from developing countries and speculation on the world markets.
The soaring cost of fuel is also having a painful impact on the wider economy and brought renewed calls yesterday for the government to scrap rises in duty planned for the autumn as motorists face increasingly steep increases in the cost of filling their tanks
(23 May 2008)
Crisis for US airlines as oil prices defy gravity
Platts
Fuel costs are the biggest catalyst in the latest flurry of consolidations in the US airlines industry, analysts say, and may bring about more trouble as with the exception of a few, none of the airlines has prepared for today’s cost environment.
“Frankly, we do not believe that the US airline industry can withstand $100+/barrel oil prices (see chart: NYMEX sweet crude oil) without major structural change,” analysts at Merrill Lynch Airline Research said.
“Fuel is the highest single expense for Delta and Northwest, significantly eroding the financial benefits of restructuring and placing the airlines’ new-found strength and stability at long-term risk,” Delta Airlines said in a press release on the announcement of its intended merger with Northwest Airlines.
While fuel costs used to represent the second largest category in airlines’ operating expenses, coming right after personnel costs, they have now outpaced labor to constitute nearly 40% of ticket prices, John Heimlich, Vice President of Air Transport Association (ATA), a US-based industry trade organization says.
(20 May 2008)
Ford cuts production, moves back profit goal
High gas prices, weak economy depress sales at big U.S. automaker
Associated Press vis MSNBC
Fast-rising gas prices claimed their latest victim Thursday: Ford Motor Co., which dropped its goal of becoming profitable by 2009 and said it will cut production of trucks and sport utility vehicles through the rest of this year. It was a warning shot to the rest of the beleaguered U.S. auto industry, which is facing its worst sales in more than a decade.
Dearborn-based Ford didn’t rule out layoffs or plant closures as it retrenches in a slumping industry, saying it would release more detail about its cost-cutting efforts in July.
(22 May 2008)
Why Bikes Are a Sustainable Wonder
Sightline
Note: This is adapted from Sightline’s book, Seven Wonders, which was re-released in 2008 as a climate-change handbook. Read about it here.
The gist: Two-wheeling ranks as the most energy-efficient form of travel–and makes you healthier to boot. Let’s give it more respect.
The details: Northwesterners might not believe it, but our love affair with bicycles puts us squarely in the transportation mainstream. The bicycle is the world’s most widely used transport vehicle.
Worldwide, bicycles outnumber automobiles almost two to one, and their production outpaces cars three to one. Rush-hour traffic in China is dominated by human-powered vehicles (though that’s beginning to change). Even in the wealthy cities of Europe and Japan, large shares of the populace get around by bike.
Despite its popularity elsewhere, the bicycle gets little use or respect, except as a plaything, in North America. Of all trips in the United States, less than 1 percent are made by bicycle. Some government agencies have embraced bikes, but they remain the exception.
The bicycle–the most energy-efficient form of travel ever devised–deserves better. Pound for pound, a person on a bicycle expends less energy than any creature or machine covering the same distance. (A human walking spends about three times as much energy per pound; even a salmon swimming spends about twice as much.)
An amazing invention, the automobile has given twentieth-century humans unprecedented mobility. Yet cars have proliferated to the detriment of all other means of getting around and at great expense to human and natural communities.
(22 May 2008)
