What goes around, comes around

I offer my congratulations to Airbus for achieving EASA approval for the full A330 family to fly 240 minute ETOPS. I know, from my days in that company, that it has been a long and arduous road for those involved. The Airbus press release (available on their website) curiously suggests that this is the first aircraft approval for 'beyond 180 minutes'. Actually, this is not the case. The Boeing 777 has enjoyed limited 207 minute operation for over ten years, and 240 minutes has also been available on specific routes, subject to very special conditions. Airbus also refers to International Civil Aviation Organisation 'rules'. Again, not so. ICAO issues recommendations, not rules.

This should not take the gloss of the achievement. But It was not always like that. I well remember being shouted at by an angry John Leahy, Airbus's petulant chief salesman. I had suggested to John that applying for 180 minutes ETOPS for the A330 would be a good strategy. "We don't want it!" he yelled at me. At the time, Leahy went on record as saying that the FAA's 240 minute proposals were a serious mistake.

Well, he's singing a very different tune now. But somehow I doubt whether he will ever tame his notorious short fuse.

Pardon me, but will you please take care of my CO2 emissions?

I've always been sceptical about carbon offset schemes. Buying offsets is rather like jumping on a kind of carbon carousel, which bounces the emissions responsibility elsewhere. I spoke with Richard Dyer, transport and climate change campaigner for Friends Of The Earth earlier this week and he told me that carbon offsetting is just an excuse to carry on usual behaviour because you've 'done your bit'.

It transpires that one of the very first travel agencies to introduce a carbon offsetting programme, Responsible Travel in the UK, has now become one of the first to discontinue such a scheme. In announcing their decision, they said that offsetting was distracting tourists from a need to act responsibly and amounted to nothing more than a kind of medieval pardon.

I couldn't agree more. Paying for offsets will never be anything other than a mechanism for either the wealthy or the guilty to sign cheques for someone else to undertake 'green' projects on their behalf. Bravo to Responsible Travel.