Private jets: view the most frequent or shortest routes in France – Le Monde

PSG coach Christophe Galtier has sparked controversy by trying to justify the use of the plane, rather than the TGV or the “sailing”, to get to Nantes. The Parisian team has indeed rented a fifty-six-seat Boeing 737 for a Paris (CDG)-Nantes round trip, for its Ligue 1 match. A forty-two-minute journey to which are added transfers to Roissy airport, then the journey from Nantes airport to the Beaujoire stadium. On the way back, the team even had to take a bus to Saint-Nazaire because Nantes airport does not allow departures after midnight, which caused a twelve-minute empty journey for the plane of the Lithuanian company KlasJet. A total of at least four hours for the round trip, not counting waiting times, which has few advantages over a train journey (two hours between Paris-Montparnasse and Nantes stations, as pointed out by Alain Krakovitch, director of TGV-Intercités). But the indignation comes mainly from the pollution generated: on this route, the train releases around 100 times less CO2 into the atmosphere: 134 kg for 56 people in the TGV against more than 13 tonnes for the jet, without even counting the flight empty between Nantes and Saint-Nazaire and bus journeys. Read also: Private jets of celebrities: behind the denunciation of pollution, the growing success of “flight tracking” Beyond this example and others very publicized during the summer, how are private jets used? To find out, Le Monde has compiled the flights of 235 active jets registered in France and analyzed more than 125,000 flights, including more than 30,000 since the start of 2022. This data is available thanks to ADS-B sensors , mandatory on board all recent aircraft, freely accessible in real time on sites such as adsbexchange.com. These jet trips weigh disproportionately on the environment: according to the NGO Transport & Environment, a jet trip pollutes between five and fourteen times more than an airliner, which itself emits about forty times more than a train. Since January 1, 2022, at least 25,535 flights have been made to or from France. The vast majority of flights take place between cities with a direct commercial link, or even easily connected by train, with a much lower carbon impact. The most obvious example is that of the Paris-Bordeaux journey, which has been traveled at least 375 times by jet since the start of 2022: while the two cities are linked in two hours ten by TGV, the journey by private plane saves barely an hour and a quarter, multiplying CO2 emissions by four hundred. Among the five most frequently made journeys in France, only Cannes, a city very popular with private travel enthusiasts, is not accessible from Paris by plane. However, a direct flight to Nice and a car journey of about forty-five minutes saves three-quarters of CO2 emissions. Jet Plane Train Car In 2022 In May, Elon Musk was pinned for a journey of just nine minutes between San Francisco and San José. The CEO of Tesla is not alone in making trips that could easily be made by (electric) car. Since January 1, more than 730 domestic flights in mainland France have taken less than thirty minutes. Avignon-Montpellier is one hour and fifteen minutes by car and about twenty-four minutes by jet, three times faster for at least five times more emissions, yet this flight has been made more than one hundred and fifty times since the beginning of the year. The table below compiles the shortest flights carried out repeatedly (i.e. at least more than once) in 2022. The CO2 emissions here are largely underestimated, because the calculator of the he European Environment Agency has not been designed for such short flights, yet the take-off and landing phases are the most fuel-intensive. Jet Train Car Trip 2022