Jet Green

Richard Branson is a cool mofo. So says my girlfriend Miller (a cool mofo herself) in passing on this item about Branson finally bringing back Virgin Air to Chicago—and along with it, a new idea he’s promoting to make airports more environmentally friendly. (If you caught him on Bill Maher’s Real Time a couple of weeks ago, he was talking about this idea there, too.)

Instead of having Hummer-like vehicles simply tug jetliners away from the gate, Branson wants to tug them all the way to a holding area at the end of the runway.

It’s an initiative that’s about to get under way at JFK Airport in New York and at London’s Heathrow and Gatwick Airports. If Daley can find a way to duplicate those efforts in Chicago, 80 percent of the total emissions of carbon monoxide would be eliminated, leaving the air around Chicago a whole lot cleaner, Branson said.

“We believe it’ll speed up the process — not slow the process down. You’ll have a holding bay at the end of the runway where you’ll take the planes to. They won’t actually start the engines until eight minutes or so before takeoff. The tugs themselves can be run on ethanol. They can be very friendly. And the same can happen to the planes when they land. You can just have the tugs there. They can take them straight back” to the gate, Branson said.

…”It’s something people should have thought of before. The airline industry has cost itself hundreds of millions by not doing it. The environment has been damaged,” he said.

Branson says the tugs will save two to three tons of fuel per flight. If the tugs are available at both ends, it also saves an additional ton of fuel in the air, because the plane doesn’t need to carry the extra tonnage to taxi about the airports. Implementing Branson’s suggestion could thusly save as much as seven tons of fuel per flight. There’s a reason this guy’s a billionaire.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, who’s been interested in ways to green the city for years, is looking into the idea, and says as long as it doesn’t slow O’Hare’s operations and the FAA approves, he’s into it—and will consider it alongside other proposals like requiring alternative energy in airport vehicles. It would really be something if O’Hare, which is the busiest airport in the world, leads the way in making air travel more environmentally friendly.

Branson, by the way, got the idea while talking to one of his pilots on the set of Casino Royale, while he was waiting backstage to shoot a cameo. What a life this guy leads. I love him endlessly—and not just because he’s a wonderfully eccentric knighted pothead and gay lion* who provides the best flights on the planet between Chicago and London, but because he gives a shit. You may remember he recently pledged $3 billion toward alternative fuel development:


Check out the airline mogul talking about how airlines providing flights on routes for which trains are more efficient and more environmentally responsible should be taxed out of existence. I believe that’s called putting one’s money where one’s mouth is.

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* Richard Branson is technically neither gay nor a lion.