Is John Vidal merely ill-informed or is he actually this dim?

We think this is an interesting question. John Vidal complains about ghost flights by the airlines:

Flying empty or near-empty planes around just to hold on to landing slots at airports now seems close to “ecocide” – an act of deliberate destruction of the environment. A staggering 15,000 ghost flights flew from UK airports between March 2020 and September 2021.

We’d not say ecocide ourselves, emissions from flights are about 2% of whatever problem there is so not a major factor. But yes, flying empty planes in and out of airports merely to hold on to the right to fly in and out of an airport is somewhere between silly and daft. But it’s the next bit that makes us fear for Mr. Vidal’s intellect:

These flights are a symptom of an unregulated, highly protected industry encouraged to keep growing without responsibility.

It’s that word “unregulated”. Airlines would obviously prefer not to be flying ‘planes with no passengers - that’s costs with no revenue. So why do they do it? Because in order to maintain the right to fly in and out of an airport - to maintain the “landing slot” - you must maintain the flights in and out of that airport in that landing slot. The law states that you must do this. Even if you’ve no passengers in order to maintain that scarce resource, the right to fly, you must fly an empty ‘plane.

Ghost flights are a product of regulation, not a sign of an unregulated industry.

Which brings us to that headline question, is John Vidal merely grossly ill-informed or is he actually dim enough not to understand? We can’t, without looking it up, recall whether Vidal’s career was at The Guardian or Greenpeace. Not that it’s worth looking up because either answer wouldn’t in fact resolve that headline question, would it?