My year in flights ✈️
Tl;dr: I intended to fly less in 2020 than I did in 2019. I did fly less, but not in quite the way that I’d hoped.
I ended 2019 having flown more flights than I’d ever flown in a single year before — a total of 19. I know this because I’m a nerd and keep track of this stuff (in this case, on myFlightradar24). I’d become increasingly less comfortable with this record — surveys suggest that 85% of the UK’s population take 2 or fewer flights in a year, so that figure placed me way on the upper end. I did some very rough estimation which suggested that my flying was somewhere around 25% of my carbon footprint — which meant I felt I had a responsibility to do better.
And all this happened without me living far away from family, or being in a long-distance relationship that might provide some justification. I just took a combination of work trips (I’d been working on a Horizon 2020 project with regular meetings held in different countries) and personal travel over the year, and it added up.
And so, I modestly promised myself that I’d take fewer flights in 2020 than I did in 2019. I’d seen the Flight Free campaign, but I didn’t feel up to that. In reality, I’d hoped to take many fewer than that, and see how I’d adapt to travelling by means other than flying (mostly trains 🚄).
So it was that on 3rd January 2020, I flew back home from a trip to Vienna. It would be the only flight that I took in 2020.
The first part of my 2020 in travel went largely as planned. A review meeting for that European project took place in Brussels — which would have been a Eurostar trip for me anyway. I was rather pleased with myself for making it from the office in Birmingham to my hotel in Brussels in 5 hours, with much less stress than flying. But I also decided to extend the trip by taking the train over to Hannover to see a friend, and coming back all the way to Birmingham by train. It was a lovely trip, and a very comfortable day’s worth of travel on the return. So far, so good.
Then things started to get a bit strange. Another work trip to Brussels was booked on the Eurostar. The COVID situation was getting worse by the day, on both sides of the Channel. I still thought there was a chance I’d be able to go. I held out, had a chat with colleagues and said we’d review again in a day or two. Things got worse quickly. I cancelled the trip, and the event was cancelled the same day.
The next few months were dominated by cancellations — a trip with family to Andorra (via Paris and a sleeper train), a work trip to Lisbon and Lithuania (for which I’d planned a complex itinerary by rail and sea — which I’m not sure I could have executed), and trips to Ireland by car/rail/ferry. All in all, it was shaping up to be a busy travel year, and hopefully I’d have executed most of it with my feet on the ground, so to speak.
So my 2020 in travel was much more local. I did get to the seaside down in Bournemouth, and took a trip to London — but that was about it. It has been quite a change, but I’ve enjoyed it. Those European project meetings just took place on Zoom. Not quite the same as meeting in person, but good enough. I definitely achieved my goal, but thanks to reasons that were totally out of my control.
Where does this leave me for 2021? Well, I’m definitely just as committed to reducing my carbon footprint in this most relevant area of my life. I definitely think that some of those work events will continue to take place. And (subject to the COVID situation improving) I’m really excited to be able to take some of those longer train trips that I didn’t get to take this year. So I’ll set myself another very Achievable target and aim to take no more than 5 flights in 2021. As before, I’ll try to keep it well below this if I can.
I’ll let you know how it goes!
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