The (Bleak) Future of Air Travel

It’s occurred to me now and again that pretty much every real or hypothetical technological development you hear about that could make things radically more fuel efficient relates to cars. But high oil prices would also imperil the viability of airplanes. And while it’s pretty clear in the case of automobiles that if 10-15 years from now oil is incredibly expensive we’ll be able to shift to plug-in vehicles of some kind nobody seems to think you can build an electric plane. Brad Plumer looked into this for The New Republic and, indeed, there seems to be absolutely nothing on the horizon, technologically speaking, that could shelter air travel from its heavy vulnerability to air travel.

For short flights, high-speed rail is a very good alternative option. It would require substantial investment in infrastructure, but it’s not as if we got our current air travel network without substantial investment in infrastructure. But even a train enthusiast such as myself needs to acknowledge some serious limits to this option. Most notably, as Brad says, “Trains, of course, can’t span oceans.” Which leads to some genuinely wacky scenarios:

Perhaps the most unlikely alternative to emerge in recent months is the rebirth of the dirigible or airship, as companies have already been unveiling new designs for niche tourist trips and transporting cargo. The good news is that modern helium airships are far safer than the Hindenburg and emit a great deal less carbon than jumbo jets. The bad news is that natural reserves of helium may be running low and, more to the point, airships can’t carry many people at a time, don’t handle heavy weather well, and are quite slow: A flight from New York to London would take around 40 hours. (Fast passenger ships would take twice as long, though modern ocean liners suffer in peak oil scenarios, too.)

Near the end, Brad quotes George Monbiot saying that a major decline in the availability of air travel “flies in the face of everything we have been encouraged to regard as progress.” It’s worth considering in that regard, however, that for decades now aerospace technology has really been disappointing the high hopes that once existed for it. We’ve already pulled back from manned travel to the moon and from supersonic passenger travel as basically impractical so it wouldn’t totally shock me to see further backsliding on this front even as advances continue in other domains.