Lia and I do like Virgin America Airlines, despite their in-flight texting (personally not a fan) and other idiosyncrasies. They’ve taken innovative approaches to differentiating themselves in the marketplace, which I always appreciate.
However, when I saw this on Virgin America’s Twitter feed, I was immediately annoyed.
Look, I can appreciate attempting to green your business. But flying isn’t green. At all.
It irritates me that Virgin is publicizing this. It’s like an oil company promoting itself as sustainable. Feels hollow these days, doesn’t it?
I would caution the airline on capitalizing too much on this newest ranking. Because this is essentially the definition of greenwashing.
The tweet does link to the piece which has this at the end (thank goodness):
No matter which way you cut it flying is a highly carbon intensive activity–though interestingly when TreeHugger compared different long distance travel methods, driving from New York to Los Angeles by yourself in a car getting average fuel economy was similar–the notion of a green airline when fossil fuels are involved is a bit of an oxymoron.
At this stage, the airline business cannot be green. Period.
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