I still can’t wrap my head around the physics. Commercial jets weigh more than private jets and carry much more people (which also contributes to the extra weight)
Doesn’t that mean the plane would have to do extra work to move around, and thus consume more fuel as an energy source?
Shouldn’t that make them emit more gases as end products of combustion?
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Private jets carry significantly fewer people so their emissions/passenger mile is much higher.
The commercial jet may be four times the mass, but it’s carrying fifty times as many people.
on a one to one comparison, commercial jets emit more greenhouse gasses. just like a bus emits more greenhouse gasses than a car. but the point in all those “green comparisons” is that you can fit 50 people on a bus and 4 on a car (or 300 on a 747 vs 15 on a bizjet). so in total the greenhouse gas emitted per person is much less if all those 50 people use a bus instead of 25 (or 50 cars). same for private jets vs commercial jets. per person, it’s less greenhouse gasses emitted (assuming the plane is full).
Think about it as “greenhouse gas per person.” Also, all of those private jets passengers could be flown commercial. That would eliminate all private jet emissions and only increase commercial flight emissions slighty
Yes, bigger jets emit more pollution, but on a per person basis they emit much less. A celebrity and their entourage could take up 10 seats on a commercial flight rather than needing an entire plane for themselves.
1. Bigger engines tend to me a bit more efficient than smaller ones.
2. Their primary argument, however, is that the emissions per passenger mile are MUCH greater on a private plane. It is more efficient to cram/ship 300 people in a large metal tube, than it is to ship them in 75 smaller metal tubes.
I think you will find the statistic is that private jets cause more greenhouse gases **per passenger**.
Private jets tend to fly a very small number of people.
Commercial airliners will out pollute a jet on a single flight, but that commercial will fit the same amount of people in one flight that would take a private jet twenty trips to achieve.
It’s not that they emit more pollutants, it’s that they emit more pollutants per person. On a commercial jet, like a 747, you’ve got up to 400+ people being moved, so the the individual carbon footprint is the footprint of the flight divided by 400ish.
On a private jet, you’re often talking about fewer than 10 people, sometimes even less. That means the per capita carbon footprint is much higher. It’s the same as diving your own car to work or taking mass transit.
Private jets use hundred of gallons per hour but a 747 burns THOUSANDS of gallons per hour.
Are you thinking about the fact that private jets are more wasteful use of gas than commercial?
Private jets are far more polluting than commercial jets per person, per unit of distance travelled, since they typically have far fewer people on board. In general, public transport tends to be far less polluting than private vehicles per person, e.g. buses and trains are generally much better than cars.
But there are some considerations that make private jets even worse. Often, many of the passengers will be personal staff who only need to be there at all because their client is. They’re also often used for frivolous journeys, including extremely short flights – it can be worth getting on a very short flight as a VIP, since you can schedule the flight exactly when you need it and you can use small private airfields where you don’t need to wait around for security checks and so on.
It’s a per passenger ratio… a private jet might emit 20% of the emissions that a commercial plane does, but carries 2% (say 4 vs. 200) of the passengers a commercial flight does.
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