It's pedantic buzz killery, which is boring and lame.

Are we going to... not fly planes any more? Drive cars? Deliver cargo? Take trips to visit family in another town/state/country?

"Hey Tim, how was the weekend?"

"Great. I drove down to Portland to see my mom after her surgery, she's doing gr--"

"You decided to spend your weekend destroying the environment?!"

It may be true, but I would expect this sort of waste is a drop in the bucket -- drop in the swimming pool, even -- compared to all the waste going on over the rest of the planet during the same time period.

That's not to say we shouldn't avoid waste, but this flight was a pretty momentous occasion (final delivery flight of a 747), and I think it's appropriate to mark that occasion in some unique manner. Burning a bunch of extra jet fuel doesn't seem all that inappropriate, especially considering the total amount of jet fuel burned in a given day.

There's just really no need for such buzzkillery.

> drop in the swimming pool

That's pretty close. It could be a good chance to educate people, perhaps, without turning it into a buzzkill. "This plane burned 27 tons of fuel for that pretty pattern in the sky, but if that sounds like a lot of fuel just wait until you find out that planes burn a million tons every day!"