It is a hitherto unprecedented situation that the flight attendants of an Air France plane experienced on Wednesday. In fact, they were surprised to see one and only couple boarding the aircraft, which can accommodate up to 140 passengers. The couple from Ain took off from Agadir for Paris after spending a week’s vacation in Morocco. According to information from Le Parisien, the captain allegedly told the two passengers that they were among “the few in the world to whom it happened”.
The couple was thus able to enjoy a VIP trip: champagne meal and personalized announcements by voice and not on the microphone, concerning the flight plan, the weather or the time of arrival. But if such a situation is unusual, it is nonetheless catastrophic from an environmental point of view. According to Air France’s carbon calculator, a one-way trip from Agadir to Paris (2,442 km) emits 319 kg of CO² and consumes an average of 2.62 liters of kerosene per passenger for 100 km. The journey of this couple will therefore have required 8,960 liters of kerosene.
The airline explained that this was an exceptional case. “Originally, a flight was set up to take care of customers of Transavia (note: a low-cost subsidiary of the group which is heavily affected by the strike movements), whose flight between Paris and Agadir has been cancelled. We wanted to respond as a priority to this outbound flight to save their holidays,” explained the Air France spokesperson to our French colleagues. “If the flight was full on the way out, the passengers again stranded for the return flight were fewer,” he added, saying there was no other solution.