Frequent flyer schemes operated by airlines are driving climate change, a charity has said, amid calls for the reward programmes to be immediately scrapped.
34 times the lifetime quota of CO2
Possible, a non-profit INGO working on climate issues, has released a report that calculates the number of flights and therefore amount of carbon emissions required to achieve elite status on both Virgin Atlantic and British Airways frequent flyer programmes. The charity claims that merely qualifying to join any frequent flyer scheme entails taking so many flights that clients would create emissions between 7 and 112 times higher than the average UK air passenger.
British Airways might argue that anyone can subscribe to the British Airways Executive Club for free, without taking a single flight – though why this would be desirable is not clear.
Possible goes further in its report, noting that anyone with BA or Virgin “Gold Status” would be emitting 27 tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) every year, 33-fold the UK average travel footprint. That rises to 90 tonnes, for elite statuses, and a shocking 1,800 tonnes of CO2e per person per year for the highest lifetime status. That’s 34 times the per person lifetime quota if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C.
Flying unneeded miles just for points
BA has recently changed the rules of its programme to reward money spent rather than air miles flown. However, Possible says this simply translates to other unsustainable consumer behaviours, such as flying in a higher class than they would have (which has a bigger carbon footprint), booking hire cars they don’t need, and even taking flights they do not need to take, just to complete a run of points and boost their frequent flyer status level.
Taking unneeded flights, especially if you fly a lot anyway, may sound extreme, but the practice is recognised enough to have its own moniker: “tier point run”. Travel sites, such as Head4Points, run forums where users and staff advise each other on flying more miles to pick up points, with topics such as: “Can you do a Virgin Atlantic tier point run on Singapore Airlines?” A staff answer in the thread details how many points you might earn for various flights and makes recommendations such as “If you are pushing for Virgin Atlantic status, you could pick up some tier points fairly easily by building this flight into a short break around Southern Europe.”
“Urgent action” needed
With only a small percentage of the world’s population ever having flown in a plane, Possible points out the entitlement of passengers who take extra unneeded flights, when they already fly more and pollute more than their fair share.
As a result “urgent action to protect the climate” is needed, says Alethea Warrington, senior campaigner at Possible. “Airlines are incentivising a small group of incredibly frequent flyers to take flights they don’t even want, just to get points – while people around the world pay the real price as they face dangerous heat waves and out of control wildfires. Airlines need to end this irresponsible behaviour, and stop awarding points for pollution.”
