That's about 3.5 metric tons of CO2 over six months.[1] They should at least bat an eye.

[1] http://www.icao.int/ENVIRONMENTAL-PROTECTION/CARBONOFFSET/Pa...

The plane was going to fly regardless, he actually improved its load factor by flying on it.

False assumption. Planes fly in response to aggregate passenger demand. Changing commuting habits for the sake of the environment would lead to fewer flights.

This is not true. Planes fly for many reasons. Load Factor is just one of them. Maintaining slots at airports is another. Moving cargo is a third. Staging aircraft for other, more profitable routes as well.

I know it's counter intuitive, but once a route is established, flying on it reduces the co2 per passenger.

Don't take it from me, take it from the carbon offset people:

http://www.co2offsetresearch.org/aviation/Occupancy.html

Nope. You are simply ignoring the role of passenger demand in creating more flights. Additionally, CO2 per passenger is not the only consideration for sustainability; the goal is minimizing total CO2 output, i.e. total number of passengers.

Once you've told this to each of the 250 guys who do the same, er...

If we're going to be insufferably pedantic here, the plane burned more fuel because he was on it, because it had to fly at a marginally higher angle of attack because of the extra weight.

Nope.

http://www.co2offsetresearch.org/aviation/Occupancy.html

"uses the following example to illustrate this: with an occupancy rate of 51%, the fuel burned per passenger-km is 0.176 lb. In comparison, a load factor of 100% corresponds to fuel burned per passenger-km of only 0.112 lb (RCEP, 2003)."

.176 is not double .112, it's only 57% more, so it seems that doubling occupancy results in a 27% increase in total fuel usage ( (2 * .112) / .176).

That's much better than a linear increase, but it's hardly zero. Am I doing the math correctly? (Ignoring the 50% vs. 51% difference).

"less fuel per passenger", the claim made in your link, is not the same as "less fuel", the claim you're refuting.

He's probably not shocked by the distance, but rather the lifestyle of living in two places, one for work and one for your family.

No, it's not a crazy distance, but the time adds up by the time you've got to the airport, checked in, etc.

He's also away from his family all week.

Great if it's working out for him, but a little surprising to see it juxtaposed with working remote for Tumblr.

It's not entirely true that no one bats an eye lid, although you're absolutely correct that it's going on in the consultancies here.

If you're out of the consultancy firms/big corporates/big gov, it would be considered pretty weird/out there.

I recently finished on a project where my company was flying in multiple consultants from Sydney to Melbourne each week. It went on for months/years. I made what I consider a friendship with one of the consultants, and apparently they were putting them up in hotels here each week, while his family stayed in Sydney. The consultants would fly back each Friday, then come back Monday morning or Sunday night and do it all again.

Now to say no one bats an eyelid...well, from our side of things, us lower downs viewed it as an example of how much of a joke the consultancy arrangement was and how much we were overpaying them. It also also solidified in our mind how poorly the consultancies treated their staff, and how we would never work for them if given a choice.

But we weren't the ones controlling the purse strings. Such is life :)

This just makes me think of the time when I knew people making mad money commuting from Wellington to Melbourne to try and get a failing SAP implementation over the line. The order-of-magnitude cost blowout on that project was doubtless assisted by the folks making that round trip and running up central Melbourne hotel bills and dining.

The flight time might be 1.5 hours, but the overall commute will be at least 3 hours given that you need to arrive at the airport in advance, then add the commute to and from the airport.

People in the Bay Area spend that much time driving 15 miles to work.

...but do hopefully see their families, at least for a bit, when they get home.

Daily

You probably don't have to deal with customs for a domestic flight between Sydney and Melbourne. You can't just measure flight time.

Amsterdam and Geneva are both in the Schengen zone so you don't need to deal with customs or immigration there either.

But the security checks are a bitch though and there tend to be long queues especially during business flight hours. In general you want to be about 30-45 minutes at the airport before your flight.

Wow. In the US 30-45min is a dream.

I'm Swiss and I do think it's pretty crazy doing that even though the flight time itself is not that much. It's probably just not being used to people flying so often as it's not that common (at least it's the first time I hear a story like this). Also 1.5h is probably an understatement given that you also have to go through customs every time.

It is quite common, at least in the circles I work in. I had a couple of colleagues that would travel from Poland to the England on Monday morning and back to Poland on Friday evening. He told me that his airline ticket was about 80EUR per week and his accomodations needs are being met by the company.

For a country as large as Australia, I keep thinking that air travel would be an extremely popular travel mode, but I think the population is too small and scattered to support this.

Nah, most Australians live in a major city, and we don't have that many, and they are on average 1000km apart, so we do plenty of flying

I think you are right. When I was living in Melbourne, it just felt like the most folks lived/worked in the one city, and if there are any travel, it was the car. Also felt like the majority of air traffic was between Sydney and Melbourne. I guess times have changed since I lived there.

I am consulting for a company across Los Angeles and depending on the time of day, it can take 1.5 hours or more to get across, one-way. For a while, I got in the habit of getting up before the sun to make the commute before everyone else (35 minutes) but coming back it still took about an hour and a half.

Then I started using Uber -- now I get extra time to catch up on my emails and promote my business.

I live in South Africa, and a load of people fly Cape Town <> Johannesburg once a week (according to your link, it's the 10th busiest route in the world). It's about a 2 hour flight.

I don't think the amazement has as much to do with the distance as it does the idea of living and working in two different countries.

I did exactly this commute for 9 months in 2009. Saw the same people every week.

With traffic on either end and airport waiting it was about 5 hours each way between Sandton and home in CT southern suburbs (before Guatrain, it may be better now).

I couldn't handle the Monday morning red eye after a while and started leaving Sunday afternoons.