An airline is flying an empty passenger jet between Heathrow and Cardiff on a daily basis - just so that it can hold on to its lucrative slots at the London airport.
The flights, which have pumped hundreds of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the past five months, threaten to undermine the aviation industry's public stance of trying to reduce emissions. The flights are being run by British Mediterranean Airways (BMed) - until recently part-owned by the family of Wafic Said, the Syrian-born financier - which flies the Airbus passenger plane from Heathrow to Cardiff and back six times a week. As a British Airways franchise, it pays a percentage of its revenue to BA in return for operating in its livery.
No tickets are sold and all 124 passenger seats are empty. Because there are no passengers, the "ghost" flights, which have run since October, do not appear on departure or arrival boards.The sole purpose is to keep hold of landing slots on runways at Heathrow, the world's busiest airport for international flights. The slots can be reallocated if an airline does not use them regularly. They are so valuable that they can change hands among airlines for up to £10m each.
The disclosure comes as David Cameron, the Tory leader, attempted this weekend to seize the "green" initiative with plans to hit airlines and passengers with new taxes. These could be calculated according to the number of miles they fly each year. In The Sunday Times today, David Miliband, the environment secretary, proposes giving people an annual carbon allowance, making them financially responsible for their emissions. He also calls for restrictions on airline emissions. Such concerns will be reinforced by the BMed ghost flights. Each 140-mile flight produces 5.21 tons of carbon dioxide.
Over the five months, the 12 flights a week will have sent as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 36,000 cars streaming along the M4 motorway. It is equivalent to the annual CO2 output of a town of 2,000 people. By the end of this month the flights will also have cost BMed at least £2m. There is a £2,500 fuel bill for each flight, plus £300,000 a month for the lease, insurance, crew and maintenance charges.
Graham Thompson of Plane Stupid, a campaign group, said: "It's quite shocking. These ghost flights very much undermine the greenwash we get from the airlines on how they are going to protect the environment. This shows that they are willing to sacrifice the climate for a profit."
The flights reveal the lengths to which airlines will go to hang on to runway slots. All of Heathrow's daily 1,250 time slots - except for a few late at night - are allocated to particular airlines and are jealously guarded. BA has 40% of the slots at Heathrow. There is also an active trade in the runway positions, with some carriers prepared to buy their way in. While the trades are rarely made public, three years ago Qantas, the Australian airline, paid £20m for just two return flights a day. Airlines must use their allocation or have the slot withdrawn. If a slot is not used 80% of the time over a six-month season, it is handed back to an independent coordinating body that allocates runway times.
BMed has just eight aircraft and flies as a BA franchise to destinations such as Tehran, Beirut, Yerevan in Armenia, Baku in Azerbaijan and Tbilisi in Georgia - a list that has led some to describe it as "BA with balls".
It came up with the Cardiff plan after it was forced to scrap flights to Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, at the end of October after civil unrest there. There is no passenger service between Heathrow and Cardiff. Industry experts claimed that the costs of launching a new service for five months would have been prohibitive. However, selling tickets at £100 a journey could have brought BMed as much as £12,400 revenue for each flight. Last Friday night's arrival was the last of the day at Cardiff and the two pilots walked through a deserted airport before going to their hotel to rest before yesterday's return flight.
Green campaigners believe that airlines such as BMed should be fined for their blatant disregard of environmental concerns. Many airlines, including BA, offer to offset each passenger's share of a flight's carbon emissions in return for an extra fee. Tony Juniper, vice-chairman of Friends of the Earth International, said: "It's nuts. The government should take immediate steps to stop the practice. Clearly if a plane is full it can claim to be energy efficient, but flying empty planes is madness." He said that the government should introduce a new system to "fine" airlines that fly empty planes. There would be no charge for full aircraft but the levy would increase as the passenger list diminished.
David Richardson, Bmed's chief executive, said the company had examined several options for retaining the slots, including leasing them to another airline or operating ghost flights with a smaller aircraft. "The Uzbek market had really collapsed, but we knew we would want to use those timings again this summer. It wasn't the ideal thing to do, but we wanted to keep hold of it," he said. "It is possible to do it more cheaply than we have done - in theory. Our difficulty was that with the timings we had we needed an airport that was open all night. We looked at the alternatives, including Manston [in Kent], and Cardiff was the best option." Richardson said that BMed had decided to use a full-size airliner on the flight, rather than a smaller plane, so as not to slow down other arriving aircraft. "You could use any type of plane, but the airport gets a little upset with you if you use a little Piper Warrior, say. We did not want to get on the wrong side of the airport on that, so we used the Airbus," he said.
At the time BMed was eager to retain the valuable slots because it was seeking either fresh investment or a buyer. The airline was founded in 1994 under the chairmanship of Lord Hesketh, the Conservative peer. Guernoy, a Guernsey-registered investment group which is controlled by the trust settlements of three members of the family of Said, the benefactor of the Said Business School at Oxford University, owned a 49% stake in BMed.
Last month BMI British Midland, the British airline group chaired by Sir Michael Bishop, announced that it had struck a deal to buy BMed for £30m. It will continue flying as a BA franchise until October. BMI is the second largest slot holder at Heathrow, with 12% of the total. The London airport's runways may be about to become even more valuable with the prospect of an open skies deal between Europe and America. If this deal goes through - it is to be decided at a meeting of European transport ministers on March 22 - large American airlines that are currently barred from Heathrow are expected to buy their way in, pushing the prices of runway slots even higher.