Maeve Higgins: No such thing as 'flygskam' as airline industry takes off once again

While it felt important to secure the airline industry and associated jobs with huge financial support in the middle of the pandemic, Maeve Higgins feels we missed an opportunity to link environmental change from the industry as terms for the bailout. 

The airline industry has started to recover and, of course, wants to hold onto its profits after handing taxpayers their debts. But the US government, and others, have missed the opportunity to change it for the better.

This week, I was sitting on a Southwest Airlines flight from New Orleans to New York, reading about how the government has questions for airline executives. The government had summoned these executives to appear at Capitol Hill and answer their questions, most of which concerned the massive bailout the industry received last year. The bailout saved them after their business dropped by more than 80% when the pandemic took over the world and kept us all on the ground. 

The airline industry has started to recover and, of course, wants to hold onto its profits after handing taxpayers their debts. I was intrigued by this story of economic socialism in the private sector. I was distracted from my newspaper app by the incessant chattering coming from the speakers all around the airplane. The air steward was making all the usual announcements about seatbelts and life jackets, but he was drawing them out with his verbal flourishes and, it's not a stretch to say, adding full anecdotes too. One of my favourite things in the world is finding a joker in the pack, a person doing their day as usual but also doing it as a bit. So I paid attention and chuckled along as he said, "Now, as soon as we are wheels up, I'm on break. I'm feet up, you hear me? So ask your questions now."

 He explained how the oxygen masks worked and how it was essential to secure your own before attending to another passenger's, and he said, "And don't forget to help others unless my ex-girlfriend Tracey is on here. No sir, we're gonna let that turkey suffer!"

Empty check-in areas became a common scene across international airports as the pandemic took hold. Picture: Jim Coughlan

Support

That last one was a little much for me, but I appreciated him making an effort to be funny. I wondered if he left his job during the pandemic. Many airline workers did, despite the bailout. Back in the first panicked days of 2020, as it became clear that the industry would be one of the first casualties of the pandemic, with travel bans and no vaccine in sight, the US Department of Transportation got to work in response to increasingly desperate calls by airlines and unions. The government defined a 'major passenger airline' as those with more than $1 billion in annual operating revenue. Ten of those airlines received more than $50 billion in grants from the Payroll Support Program (PSP). 

The industry was secured for the time being, and they passed along what sounded like I.O.U.'s to the Treasury Department. The official title is 'promissory notes' that stated the airlines would pay back the government $14 billion in the future. That is a guarantee, and they also handed over taxpayers millions of stock warrants, which give the government the option to purchase shares of airline stock at a set price. The money was a bailout, not a loan, given without any expectation that it would be recouped but that the industry and its workers would be saved from decimation. Airlines sought financial assistance twice more, getting an extension of the Payroll Support Program in December 2020. In March of this year, the industry was once again bolstered by the Biden administration's larger coronavirus aid package. According to a Washington Post analysis of Treasury Department data, those stock agreements are worth about $260 million today. That is less than 1% of the $37 billion the US government gave those ten airlines last year, specifically to help pay their workers.

I'm glad that the workers were protected but amazed by the government's fast and unequivocal action to save an industry that is partially to blame for the greatest existential threat to humankind today — our heating planet. 

Back on my flight from New Orleans, I felt guilty about being on an airplane. Everything we humans do, from what we eat and how we dress to the ways we travel, releases greenhouse gases. These gases, like carbon dioxide, force the climate to change and the planet to heat up. The BBC reports that "around 2.4% of global CO2 emissions come from aviation. Together with other gases and the water vapour trails produced by aircraft, the industry is responsible for around 5% of global warming." 

Climate activist Greta Thunberg speaks to the media before beginning her voyage to the US from Plymouth on the Malizia II, to attend climate demonstrations in the country back in 2019. She consistently refuses to use airlines to travel due to industry emissions. Picture: Ben Birchall/PA Wire

Responsibility

A disproportionately few people are causing it, and most of us are in the wealthier Global North. This exacerbates the injustice of climate chaos because the places hit first and worst are in the Global South; the people there suffer more than we do. I have reduced my own time in the air as much as possible, but because of work trips and trips to see family, I'm still contributing more than my fair share of emissions. I understand that taking personal responsibility for climate chaos is reductive and misleading, considering that governments and corporations are by far the worst offenders. Just 100 investor and state-owned fossil fuel companies are responsible for around 70 per cent of the world's historical GHG emissions. My actions alone will not turn this ship, or this airplane, around. That said, individual steps are still necessary, as are societal norms and expectations of what is acceptable to do. 

In Sweden, where the magnificent climate advocate Greta Thunberg refuses to fly because of the emissions caused by airplanes, flying is certainly not seen as glamorous or cool; instead, it has a stigma attached to it, at least for the past few years.

 The term "flygskam" is Swedish for "flight shame" and tågskryt meaning "train-bragging" and att smygflyga meaning "to fly in secret" have all become part of the lexicon there.

On Wednesday at Capitol Hill, there was nothing close to "flygskam." Instead, pride and self-congratulation were evident among the airline executives as they were questioned on the bailout by largely supportive lawmakers. The issue of carbon emissions went unmentioned; the most heated question came from Representative Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican. The lawmaker, himself vaccinated, chastised the CEO of United Airlines for mandating a company-wide COVID-19 vaccine, calling the mandate "deeply disturbing ."As business returns to somewhere close to normal in the airline industry, an industry that is important for the economy but also hugely polluting and wasteful, the US government missed the opportunity to change it for the better. Instead, just as the government does with the fossil fuel industries to the tune of billions every year, they subsidized and rescued the industry. The pandemic paused this industry and the emissions that will come for us all in the form of global warming, but now it's back to full speed ahead. 

As my own flight touched down at JFK and I disembarked glumly, the flight attendant cheerily wished me a happy holiday, his eyes crinkling over his mask. I smiled, a genuine smile underneath my own mask.

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