Birmingham Airport flight emissions – calculations for #ashtag

Finally got some figures to work with in my quest to map the emissions saved by flights being grounded at Birmingham Airport during the ash cloud (first-time round).

Again, Justine Hunt at the airport’s been really helpful and I’m going to visit the environment team on Friday…so hopefully more interesting stuff on the way for BRInvestigates…

Anyway…the rough figures so far (this whole project is very much a close ‘approximation’)…

• The average number of flights in and out of Birmingham = 300 daily (over the six days, this is approx. 1800 flights cancelled)
• Approximately 203 departures per day (sample from today, Wed 12th May)
• Disregarding the type of aircraft, short and long-haul flights can be calculated using travelmath.com – which calculates the carbon emissions of each flight based on an assumption of a 65% load factor with 139 seats

As Justine pointed out, the only way to work out an average day’s flight emissions would be to take a sample from the departures board on the website (which would show short, long-haul and domestic flights) and calculate the approximate carbon output for each flight. I’ve started an Excel spreadsheet to organise and calculate this data and will attach it once completed.

Once I’ve finished the laborious task of using the calculator to estimate the total emissions from the day’s sample departures, this can then be multiplied by the six days (in which flights were grounded) to give an approximate idea of the total carbon emissions saved by flights being grounded at Birmingham Airport during the ‘first’ ash cloud incident.

 Then finally……….I will attempt to map the data. Getting there slowly….