Lufthansa’s European Union Strasbourg “shuttle”

[rbehrends]

The actual waste here is that while the European Parliament normally meets in Brussels, it is still bound by a 1992 decision to have a monthly session in Strasbourg [1]. This creates a huge and unnecessary overhead (shuttling 705 MEPs back and forth, maintaining separate offices in Strasbourg and other unnecessary duplication of efforts), of which this additional flight is just a small part. This could be fixed by deciding that the European Parliament meets in Brussels year-round.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_of_the_European_Parliamen...

[AshamedCaptain]

Or just keep adding more capitals into the rotation, until the overhead of any capital is negligible. I'm actually rather happy to have a moving capital / parliament seat. Would probably do with the fancy buildings and architecture, though.

[GekkePrutser]

The French will never agree to that, sadly. It's a prestige thing for them

[the_mitsuhiko]

So while this flight sounds a bit ridiculous it's not really. It takes of in Frankfurt and which is a big hub. You can buy a ticket VIE->FRA->SXB for 1000 EUR in Business class. It takes you three hours to get there. The cheapest ticket not involving a train in business class is 850 EUR so barely cheaper and takes 5.5 hours.

As to why the plane does not take passengers on the return flight: it's a 30 minute flight and it's probably more efficient for the airline to send the plane in that configuration back to Frankfurt as there is no demand for a business class only flight on that day out of Strasbourg. A plane that does not fly is losing money.

[anamax]

> You can buy a ticket VIE->FRA->SXB for 1000 EUR in Business class.

There's your problem. Put them in economy. That adds 50% more seats to the flight AND saves money.

Or rather, reimburse them for economy and let them decide whether they want to pay more.

[sofixa]

I don't get the point of this flight. A train between the two will be around two hours, so an hour slower than the plane, but when you add travel to airports, it's probably faster, and the trains are more comfortable (and you can work from them).

[bobthepanda]

Frankfurt is a major Lufthansa hub.

There is a train station at Frankfurt Airport, but a plane connection would be airside, and for connections having to travel to city center possibly with bags is a minus.

These days there is onboard wifi on most planes.

[ZeroGravitas]

Frankfurt is probably the closest international hub airport for people flying in from other countries.

[bogomipz]

It looks like there is a rail option between Brussels and Strasbourg which is just under 4 hours[1]. That's four hours where you can work the entire time. With the boarding, flight time and travel time to and from the airport what is the actual time savings here 1 hour? And if you could work the whole time on a train it sounds like a non-issue since this schedule seems to factor in two of the 4 days as travel days. Also why Frankfurt? I realize Frankfurt is an airhub but why would this be a convenient location?

[1] https://www.rome2rio.com/map/Brussels/Strasbourg#r/Train/s/0

[nikanj]

Because frequent flier points get you nicer things than frequent rail points

[durnygbur]

Lufthansa will do everything to be profitable, except selling cheaper tickets and taking more passengers. Strategically they are the opposite of Ryanair.

[meinersbur]

Some American Carriers have a lot shorter routes flying a lot more often [1].

Frankfurt <-> Strasbourg (220km) San Francisco <-> San Salito [2] (90km)

The point of these are connections. If you are already at the airport, checked-in, luggage registered, you can just as well take the flight closer to your destination. Not saying the makes ecological sense, but I don't understand the outrage towards Lufthansa. Blame the MEP paying for these flights with your tax money and being bad role models contradicting the policies they are voting for.

[1] https://thepointsguy.com/news/longest-shortest-united-flight... [2] https://www.businesstraveller.com/business-travel/2017/09/29...

[lostlogin]

This flight seems very slow. I’ve just compared it to some short haul flights locally - 1hr 10 mins gets me 650km.

The flight in the article takes 55 minutes to go 178km. Short flights will have proportionally more time taxing etc, but this alone wouldn’t appear to explain it.

[maximilianburke]

Aircraft are limited to a speed of 250kts below 10,000ft unless they're in an airport's control zone and then they're limited to 200kts. So, given the time to navigate Frankfurt's complex airspace, as well as balancing how much gas needs to be burned to get high to go fast, when you will shortly need to come off the throttle and descend anyways, versus just staying low and within the speed limits, I can see 55 minutes being well within the realm of reason.

[netsharc]

Did you compare to a local flight within the EU?

Rules about on-timed-ness and passenger compensation for delays mean that airlines now add buffers to their flight times, so most of the times it's "Wahey, we're early!", when they do experience delays they end up landing at the advertised landing time, saving them from those compensation payments.

[NovemberWhiskey]

This will be the block time; gate-to-gate. It's exactly the same time that United blocks for e.g. the LAX-SAN flight, which is actually ever so slightly shorter.

[netsharc]

The EU should adopt this idea from Sweden from the 90's^W 80's, an office in a train carriage: https://youtu.be/3HbrI3refig (first 4.5 minutes)

[rob_c]

All reasonable until we slide over the custom plane config with extra business class...

I hope thats not a literal, we moved the seats for the aristocrats type of flight.

[United857]

In most European airlines short haul business class is just economy seats with the middle blocked off and slightly better food.

This means they can dynamically adjust the size of business class on a per flight basis. So "a huge business class cabin" is misleading here.

[kurupt213]

I don’t understand how airforce one got thrown out as another example of waste

[melenaboija]

It seems EU politicians believe in climate change, until they have to catch a bus for a couple of hours…

BTW, I am a EU citizen worried about climate change and tired of recycling at home to sometimes see this kind of hypocrisy of some politicians.

[axl7777]

Air transport account for less than 4% of the 51 b tons of CO2 we send every year. These politicians aren’t going to make any difference. We could ask them to be role models, but with what finality? Again air transport is not the most urgent problem. I understand this is a topic that can be used to raise awareness, but the most useful thing these politicians could do is to rethink the way (EU) businesses are leading China and India to use coal for energy. Why no one proposes to handle this topic, I do not understand. And if someone would handle it, then it would be time to use your next vote wisely.

[trompetenaccoun]

It's not even a couple of hours, that's the best part. There are direct trains (ICE/TGV) that take around two hours, some even a bit less. The flight can't possibly be faster if you factor in getting to the airport and going through the security theater. Which, if we want to talk about beliefs is another ridiculous policy that hasn't demonstrably saved any lives. Instead now people simply get shot up in theaters and run over at Christmas markets. But thank god they're taking everyone's lighter and water bottle.

I wonder if part of the reason they're flying is that they don't want to be in public transport with the plebeians.

[bogomipz]

Indeed. The political class increasingly have lost touch with just how regular people live. A regular person would be on the 4 hour train or the Flix bus. They seem to believe in lots of things mostly for "other" people though.

It would be nice if they replaced these monthly sessions with Zoom meetings or similar. It's almost as if they are completely oblivious to corporate remote meetings revolution of the last 2+ years because of the pandemic.

I have a mental image of one of these bureaucrats sitting in business class working a Powerpoint presentation about energy policy.

[gpvos]

There used to be some good intercity trains from Brussels via Luxemburg to Strasbourg (Iris and Vauban), but they were cancelled in 2016 because of the TGV Est Paris-Strasbourg. It's a bit long for a bus ride really, especially when you'd want to work during the ride.

Edit: oops, this is about Frankfurt-Strasbourg. (Sorry, I mixed it up with some other fairly recent reporting.) That's really hard to justify: there are high-speed trains doing that route in 1h50, and a non-stop one could do it even faster.

[d0mine]

As I understand recycling at home is just a red-herring (it ends up somewhere in Turkey anyway and even if it didn't it is just a bucket in the ocean compared to the actual reasons for the climate change (natural resources industry). If we won't discount the consequences on the climate then nuclear energy becomes even more price competitive (real non snake-oil solution)).

[JumpCrisscross]

> seeing this kind of hypocrisy of some politicians

No need for hypocrisy. Those of us who see flight shame as a bit silly can fly. Others can not. I assume the same applies for EU politicians.

[unmole]

> In many cases these are high ranking government officials, and presumably if this flight didn’t exist, they might travel on private jets, which would be even worse; in order words, these people probably wouldn’t otherwise take a bus

Do MEPs really qualify as high ranking government officials?

[SirHound]

Yes?

[t_mann]

Don't blame Lufthansa, blame the EU institutions and the French government for creating this bizarre nomadism of EU parliamentarians.

[sendfoods]

It makes my blood boil to think these frequent flyer politicians are the same people demanding action against climate change.

[ZeroGravitas]

I didn't really understand the significance of this?

Does it only make sense if you believe what the top commenter believes:

“So when I see stories like this, it confirms that all this climate change nonsense is just that - nonsense. If it was really an issue, these flights wouldn't exist."

[IAmEveryone]

I guess it's a bit of a curiosity. The charge of hypocrisy is to be expected, and not entirely wrong, although it suffers from the usual problem, namely that a doctor telling you that smoking is dangerous with a pack of Marlboros on his desk isn't necessarily wrong.

[smitty1e]

This is the modern equivalent of a Royal Road.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Road

[chrisseaton]

> Nearly two-thirds of the plane is business class

Why is European business class so absolutely terrible?

[Symbiote]

It's a 50 minute flight. Long flights have a better business class.

[macinjosh]

These same people want to take away affordable heating from their constituents including the poor in the name of the "climate emergency". Yet, they can take a plane (that pumps huge amounts of CO2 directly into the sky) twice a week for the distance some people commute by ground _everyday_ for work. Then they only work for two days a week. I've never seen a more disgusting display of elitism.

[simongray]

They do not only work for two days a week, come on. The European Parliament is for nearly all intents and purposes located in Brussels, the Strasbourg one is considered more of a spinoff. I seriously doubt that the parliamentarians enjoy this unnecessary monthly commute, they would certainly prefer staying in Brussels the whole time.

[netsharc]

Ah, populist anger, populist anger everywhere. You don't even know who are taking these flights, just that they're offered by Lufthansa. But sure, in your mind they're "[the] same people".