Moronomics
Please pee before boarding your flight:
A Japanese airline, All Nippon Airways, has started asking its passengers to visit the lavatory before boarding, in an attempt to reduce carbon emissions.
All Nippon Airways (ANA) reasons that empty bladders means lighter passengers, which in turn means lighter aircraft and lower fuel use.
The airline will position staff near the boarding gates in terminals to ask passengers waiting for their flight to relieve themselves before boarding the aircraft.
Let’s figure on the back of the envelope for just a moment, shall we? After exhaustive internet research lasting at least five minutes, we have determined that the human bladder can hold something like 13 ounces of fluid. Let’s round that up to 16 ounces, a pint. A pint of water weighs pretty close to one pound. Using the venerable Boeing 747 with a seating capacity of up to 366+ (we’ll use 400 to max this calculation out) we come up with something like a maximum of 400 pounds saved if every man, woman and child drops off a full pint of urine before boarding.
The Boeing 747 uses something like one gallon per second of jet fuel in operation. Jet fuel weighs around 6.75 pounds per gallon.
In other words, less than one minute of operation time.
If you honestly cannot see that the pee-before-you-fly stunt is an exercise in PR over fact, I’m frankly sorry for you. No, it is not a good start, no, it is not an “every little bit helps” moment.
It is moronic. And if you fall for it, it says rather a lot about your math skills.
None of it good.
Appalling, World news | Gaius October 2, 2009
By Bleepless, October 2, 2009 @ 7:34 pm
It would be even better if passengers’ arms, legs, heads, etc., were sawed off. Being tolerant, I would be satisfied with simply having them all bleed out. Carbon, beware!
By crosspatch, October 2, 2009 @ 10:27 pm
400 lbs. That’s like three adult passengers, two if you count luggage.
Maybe they should have a special urinal that just dumps pee overboard when above a certain altitude. It would evaporate before it hit the ground. Reminds me of flying to Europe on a C-130 …
By Sam Wah, October 3, 2009 @ 7:09 am
Those of us with small bladders have always done this.
By Everett Dirksen, October 3, 2009 @ 7:27 am
A minute here, a minute there, and pretty soon you are talking real minutes.
By Mockingbird, October 3, 2009 @ 5:51 pm
I will pee when I am damn good and ready.
They can have control over my pee appliance when they pry my cold dead fingers…
By ciccio, October 4, 2009 @ 11:12 am
I am afraid your calculations are out of whack for one simple reason. The max. take-off weight for a 747 is 371 tons and it uses some 60,000 gallons to push those 371 tons across the Pacific. 400 lbs. difference in weight it not going to make one iota of difference in the fuel consumption. One minute of operating time at cruising speed is about 20 gallons, if it would save half a gallon it would be a lot.