I like travelling by bike, but i am not the biggest fan of doing roundtrips, i much prefer moving further and further away. So on longer trips i will end up way far from home, and since travelling by train across Europe, can be a real ordeal (especially with a bike), i sometimes take a plane back home. I guess busses would be an option too from some locations, i personally absolutely hate travelling by bus though. Weak excuse i know.
I am able to rationalize to myself that it is ok to take that flight, i spent now weeks doing low impact travel and can end it with a boom and still probably had less impact then with my regular life at home (i have not really done the calculation tbh). Of course, if it is reasonably easy to get home by train i will definitely prefer that, and i absolutely don’t always end up taking a plane.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you ever take a flight?
Pilots are required to calculate the amount of fuel needed for the trip +30 extra minutes. The payload weight is part of that calculation. For small 4-person aircraft that means asking each person for their weight (yes, even women must answer that). For big commercial flights they just multiply the head count by an average. The fuel weight itself is also part of that calculation, which increases as the payload increases.