The Craziness Pandemic, Part I

Global pandemics are definitely something to worry about. Consider the impact that Swine 'flu is already having on your organization … and the regular seasonal 'flu is still some weeks away from hitting us.

Swine flu threat raises telework questions

In fact, check out Google's Flu Trends; this predicts the impact of influenza from the analysis of search terms and it looks like we're about two solid months ahead of the 2003-2004 season, the worst 'flu season in the last decade.

But global pandemics aren't limited to disease. Oh no, it appears that a pandemic of weirdness is also going global.

For example, and I swear I am not making this up, a Japanese airline, All Nippon Airways (ANA,) is asking its passengers to relieve themselves prior to departure on the theory that passengers who have gone before they go are lighter passengers which, they conclude, will result in lighter aircraft and thereby lower the airline's fuel use and carbon emissions.

Now, thanks to Google, I have found that the average bladder holds between 0.6 and 2.1 pints. Let's take the middle of that range which, when filled with what we shall refer to as "liquid" would weigh around 1.7 pounds. My extensive research also reveals that the average person produces just over half a pound of poop per day; so, all up, a fully "laden" passenger would be carrying about 2.2 extra and disposable pounds.

Now, ANA flies a variety of equipment and I went to the trouble of working out that the average ANA plane carries 292.9627907 people, which is close to the capacity of the Boeing 777-200ER (a plane in the ANA fleet).

Let's, for the sake of argument, assume a worst case: That every passenger is "fully loaded" upon boarding which, for our average ANA plane, would be an extra 641 pounds at take-off.

As the Boeing 777-200ER has a minimum takeoff weight of 315,000 pounds the excess "baggage" would amount to, at worst, just 0.2% of the plane's weight!

Moreover, as the 777-200ER has a maximum fully loaded range of 7,700 nautical miles and assuming a direct relationship between weight and range, the disposable weight would amount to around $186 of jet fuel (92 gallons at $2.02 per gallon) or about $0.63 per passenger.

ANA flew some 50 million passengers last year so the theoretical savings amount to a maximum of just less than $32 million. I say "theoretical" because obviously not every passenger will have failed to go before takeoff and, as with all "savings by aggregation" exercises; it is assumed that these savings are actually realizable. The problem is that when you're dealing with something measured in hundreds of thousandths of a dollar, you are in rounding error territory and most likely kidding yourself.

Here's the really crazy part: ANA claims the savings will reduce their contribution to greenhouse gasses by around … weight for it … just 60 tons per year!

Again, assuming that there's a direct relationship between carbon output and aircraft weight then the emission savings also amount to 0.2% of the airline's total output which is therefore around 3 million tons per year, making 60 tons a veritable drop in the bucket.