Ba Job Cuts

[libitina]

British Airways is to cut nearly 600 management jobs by March 2008.

That will account for 35% of the management team of Europe's third-largest airline and should save £50m.

In what the airline described as a restructuring of its business, the number of senior managers will be reduced by half - from 414 to 207.

And there will be a 30% reduction in the number of middle managers - from 1,301 to 911.

The saving is part of previously-announced targets to cut costs by £300m by March 2007.

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30400-13472221,00.html

[Mushroom]

Now, Airlines and Peak Oil.

With no alternatively fuelled propulsion units looking likely atm, one would have thought that airlines would be watching the future of oil supplies very carefully. Even to the point of estimating when they might be grounded.

Maximise returns now and in the immmediate future?

A further thought. Aircraft have a long service life and, however funded, aren't cheap. So while airlines still order new fleet presumably one can assume they believe oil will be available and affordable enough for traveller volumes to be maintained.

The corollary, when airlines stop ordering 'planes, the end is nigh.

Governments would probably "reserve" stocks of oil for their "essential" military aircraft before the final point too.

[libitina]

Are there likely to be alternative fuels for airlines? What else could they run on?

[MarkG]

Hydrogen is the obvious alternative, but it's less energy-dense than oil so you'd need bigger planes to carry the same number of people (plus, of course, you need some other energy source to produce the hydrogen).

I know Lockheed looked at building hydrogen-powered planes in the 50s or 60s, and it seemed doable... in fact if I remember correctly they were planning to fly them at three times the speed of sound and do airborne refuelling with liquid hydrogen on flights of more than a few thousand miles!

Oh, and if you're brave there's always nuclear power. Watching 'Thunderbirds' last night kind of put me off that idea though .

Edited November 30, 2005 by MarkG

[Mushroom]

Are there likely to be alternative fuels for airlines? What else could they run on?

In a previous thread about aircraft and Peak Oil someone linked to info. about the USA having developed a small nuclear areo engine. Iirc the poster said it was dropped because of the high rate of exposure to radiation it produced, such that you could only pilot the plane for a short time.

I'm sure there are great minds somewhere thinking about all this. Initially driven by military concerns at the moment.

Don't know how many people would want to fly on a nuclear powered aircraft or have them overhead.

There are no nuclear powered civilian ships are there?

Except if nuclear is the only way to that cheap holiday in the sun or your Carribean villa and if the technology could be applied in relative safety who knows?

[libitina]

http://planetforlife.com/h2/h2vehicle.html

http://www.bl.uk/collections/patents/greenaircraft.html

[MarkG]

From what I remember the nuclear engine was largely unshielded, so the crew got a lot of radiation exposure and so did people on the ground when it passed. However, that was designed for a 1950s bomber, so it's possible that you could build something with better shielding for a large passenger plane: of course it still wouldn't be politically feasible given the consequences of a crash.

That said, last night I also watched an old newsreel from that period about the USAF accidentally dropping a nuclear bomb in someone's back garden -- fortunately only the conventional explosives went off and not the nuclear part -- so maybe it's not much more of a risk that we face today .

Edited November 30, 2005 by MarkG

[Saving For a Space Ship]

In a previous thread about aircraft and Peak Oil someone linked to info. about the USA having developed a small nuclear areo engine. Iirc the poster said it was dropped because of the high rate of exposure to radiation it produced, such that you could only pilot the plane for a short time.

I'm sure there are great minds somewhere thinking about all this. Initially driven by military concerns at the moment.

Don't know how many people would want to fly on a nuclear powered aircraft or have them overhead.

There are no nuclear powered civilian ships are there?

Except if nuclear is the only way to that cheap holiday in the sun or your Carribean villa and if the technology could be applied in relative safety who knows?

SS Nuketanic anyone or perhaps a new BA jet plane - StrontCorde

Edited November 30, 2005 by Saving For a Space Ship

[libitina]

From what little I've been reading, it all still seems quite a way off .....they need to get their fingers out really.

[Mushroom]

http://planetforlife.com/h2/h2vehicle.html

http://www.bl.uk/collections/patents/greenaircraft.html

Thanks, looks like hydrogen is the favoured one for aircraft.

Has to be made though (back to energy debate about sources!) and will require a lot of new infrastructure. Might it be made at or near airports otherwise going to be a lot of huge tankers trundling around or new pipelines installed?

Phew, can book that 20?? hols.

[MarkG]

I'd imagine they'd make it at the airport: shipping liquid hydrogen around would make little sense if you could just create it from water electrically, or from hydrocarbons which weren't suitable for aviation use.

[nobody]

Apparently there's plenty of hydrogen in space, off-planet refuelling stations anyone

[foxytrader]

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30400-13472221,00.html

Thanks for the insight to future propulsion methods you techie types but I was rather more interested in when the raft of high profile redundancies would start to affect confidence in the economy and of course the impact on house prices.

I appreciate that airlines are a reasonably specialised area but that is 200 highly paid professionals in a contracting market now out there looking. They are (presumably) based in West London in the main.

There has been much talk of the very low unemployment rates and that this has also provided an underpin for HPs. However apparently there are now over 4m people on incapacity benefit the vast majority of whom I would assume are not economically productive. A high proportion of these claimants would previously have been considered "unemployed" for statistical purposes.

The growth of employment in hi-tech areas is numerically not huge although well-paid I would suggest. The other major area for growth seems to be Tesco's and their ilk - and these jobs are at best national average wage.

The point I am rather circuitously trying to make is that at some stage a confidence tipping point will be reached. It may simply be a combination of bad news stories coupled with static house prices and a minor hike in interest rates and at that point the slide takes on a "snowball" momentum. Alternatively it could be a double Miras-style last hurrah - a bit of prima facie good news for higher prices but effectively throwing into relief the fact that this engine's got nothing left in the tank. No further impetus on the upside coupled with more people heading for the exits?

[MarkG]

Unfortunately shipping hydrogen from Jupiter will be a little expensive for the forseeable future .

[Mushroom]

Just a little anecdotal.

One of my cousins is a Senior Captain with BA. Some 2 years ago, at a party, we were discussing the state of BA and he was rather dismissive of much of management suggesting many were superflous to the core function.

He said you'd ask someone what they did and they'd reply "Head of table layout" and the next one "Deputy head of table layout". Flippant maybe but you get the point.

Perhaps, just as in most large organisations (HM Government anyone), the empire building has got too expensive and time, once more, to concentrate on the real job.

Which is "Keep the customer satisfied".

Simple as that but don't you wish more organisations and their employees recognised that simple truth.

[rockdoctor]

Aircraft won't run out of fuel for many decades.

Peak oil is simply the point at which production PEAKS, not ceases.

Oil price will rise, and as it does people will gradually switch to alternative fuels; where available. Electricity will be produced from gas (Peak Gas comes later than Peak Oil) and later nuclear + alternatives.

Cars will be late switchers, but eventually electric/hydrogen/methanol will be a viable alternative.

Aeroplanes have no viable alternatives at present, so will be the last buyers of expensive oil left when everyone else has switched away from oil.

Of course, if there was no oil left, and you still had no alternative way of powering an aeroplane, you would simply manufacture synthetic oil. All it takes is a source of energy, and nuclear is as good as any.

So a nuclear power station CAN be used to fuel an aeroplane, but not very efficiently.

As to the cost; well a business class ticket at present costs far in excess of the fuel cost of a flight, there is lots of scope for absorbing fuel cost increases by reducing frills. But low-cost airlines' ticket prices are dominated by fuel costs, so I suspect the biggest change after Peak Oil will be a big hike in ticket prices, and rather fewer flights taking place as a consequence (rather good for the planet, if not for holidaymakers).

[Mushroom]

Aircraft won't run out of fuel for many decades.

Peak oil is simply the point at which production PEAKS, not ceases.

Oil price will rise, and as it does people will gradually switch to alternative fuels; where available. Electricity will be produced from gas (Peak Gas comes later than Peak Oil) and later nuclear + alternatives.

Cars will be late switchers, but eventually electric/hydrogen/methanol will be a viable alternative.

Aeroplanes have no viable alternatives at present, so will be the last buyers of expensive oil left when everyone else has switched away from oil.

Of course, if there was no oil left, and you still had no alternative way of powering an aeroplane, you would simply manufacture synthetic oil. All it takes is a source of energy, and nuclear is as good as any.

So a nuclear power station CAN be used to fuel an aeroplane, but not very efficiently.

As to the cost; well a business class ticket at present costs far in excess of the fuel cost of a flight, there is lots of scope for absorbing fuel cost increases by reducing frills. But low-cost airlines' ticket prices are dominated by fuel costs, so I suspect the biggest change after Peak Oil will be a big hike in ticket prices, and rather fewer flights taking place as a consequence (rather good for the planet, if not for holidaymakers).

Some questions.

The impact of millions of newly richer Chinese, Indians etc wanting the same leisure experiences we now enjoy?

Synthetic oil from nuclear. Is Blair or are his advisors being more farsighted than we realise?

How are we, who currently enjoy this cheap airtravel, going to react to large increases? Many people now see this as virtually a right and will demand a solution from their politicians. Or a huge wage increase!

Edited November 30, 2005 by Mushroom

[2005]

As to the cost; well a business class ticket at present costs far in excess of the fuel cost of a flight, there is lots of scope for absorbing fuel cost increases by reducing frills. But low-cost airlines' ticket prices are dominated by fuel costs, so I suspect the biggest change after Peak Oil will be a big hike in ticket prices, and rather fewer flights taking place as a consequence (rather good for the planet, if not for holidaymakers).

So if you have just bought a holiday home in Spain expecting to fly over there every other weekend for £25 your stuffed

[libitina]

So if you have just bought a holiday home in Spain expecting to fly over there every other weekend for £25 your stuffed

That's Ok, as their homes are shortly to be bulldozed anyway