Little time? Jump to my overall evaluation

I did take a flight again, for a 5-day personal trip. How the hell did that happen?
That's something I would need to ask myself now if I had not made up my mind properly before.

I mean, I did write a long blogpost about not taking a flight without a good purpose anymore and managed to stick to it for the last 3,5 years (at least in my private life where I was able to influence the decision of taking flights or not; there were only 2 round-trips I took while working at BCG before COVID hit). So what was my sufficiently good purpose for this short trip to Ireland now? In this blogpost, I take you on short journey through the thoughts on my mind, which I hope make you also reflect more on the next flight you’re considering taking ;-)

A personal, qualitative evaluation

The following short descriptions and simple qualitative evaluations of different aspects and arguments are both what I had to figure out myself for this decision, but could also be helpful for your orientation in case you're looking for aspects and reasons (not) to take a flight.

While evaluating this one trip by plane in my head I only had to compare the mentioned aspects quickly without noting strict categories, I use the following 3 qualitative evaluations for better illustration in this blogpost:

• + Good argument in favor of flight

• o Not a good argument by itself —> No impact on decision

• - Argument against flight

Aspect 1 - Friends & family:

Short description:

Meeting friends and family far away are good reasons to take a flight also in my personal opinion, as I already wrote in my first blogpost about purposeful travel. After all we are very social animals and need to cultivate our relationships. Personally, I would avoid flying too often and without additional reasons only to visit friends or family. Special occasions like weddings or occasional larger reunions are things I wouldn’t want to miss out on, so these could be good reasons to travel long-distance by plane. Within a 24h distance, I would still try to find a way by train and connect the trip with other good reasons / purposes, though.

I’ve only seen the friends I visited in Ireland a few times since our semester together at QUT in Brisbane 9 years ago (4 times to be exact and just once in the last 6 years). Meeting up in Ireland for a little reunion before the two friends living together in Dublin move away soon was thus a good reason for me to put extra efforts into the reunion in Dublin or in this case a good argument in favor of taking a flight.

Qualitative evaluation:

+ Good argument in favor of flight (reuniting with old friends)

Aspect 2 - Sightseeing:

Short description:

I decided for myself that only sightseeing is not a good reason for me to take a flight again by itself. There are some places far way, which I would also like to experience, but they need to be truly unique to depict a proper purpose to take a flight. Many places also have , e.g. for relaxing on a beach in the sun, for hiking or snowboarding in the mountains I can also stay in Europe and only need to wait for the right season.

Green grass with sheep & cows, stunning cliffs and hills, pretty and unique landscapes, little coastal towns and colorful houses, Irish pubs and good live music, draft beer… There are many reasons to visit Ireland for sightseeing in all dimensions. Some things you can see and do in Ireland cannot be seen or done exactly this way in other places, but at least some of these in a similar way.

Qualitative evaluation:

o Not a good argument by itself —> No impact on decision (no super special sightseeing)

Aspect 3 - Vacation mentally away from work:

Short description:

I consider it helpful to physically get away from my work in order to create mental distance and the possibility to switch off my usually constantly running thoughts about the work I’m currently doing. However, I personally do not consider more physical distance than the office or my desk to the next lacrosse field or dance studio strictly necessary. Engaging myself completely in other activities and immersing myself in different thoughts usually help me a lot. A long distance can also help to increase the mental distance, but for me personally not being reachable like on long-distance hikes in the mountains or staying in remote cabins helps a lot more.

In this case, taking a flight only felt a bit like I’m further away, but in the end the phone connection and time zone were still similar and I was easily reachable and able to continue my thoughts about work topics. Reuniting with friends made helped me much more to forget my work for a bit, but we could have also met in France later this year. The flight was thus unnecessary to get away from work and if I would make myself believe that this flight would help, that would be guiding my future evaluations in a wrong direction. Therefore, the wish to take flight to get mentally away from work in this case is an argument against taking it.

Qualitative evaluation:

- Argument against flight (extra distance is misleading)

Aspect 4 - Taking a unique opportunity:

Short description:

Unique opportunities can only be executed once as the name already suggests. I consider them very good arguments in favor of taking a flight, because they could move things in your life or for your environment that otherwise might not happen. Many of such unique opportunities moved my life into the position where I am right now and I am not sure whether I would have done the same things and developed personally in the same way, if I would not have gone to Canada in grade 11, started playing Lacrosse, joined BEST courses, volunteered at Samfundet and UKA in Trondheim, implemented a gold extraction process at a gravel pit in Colombia - just to name a few important steps, which are not the usual career steps.

For me, this trip to Ireland was a 100% hit as “unique opportunity” on a social and personal level: I organized a birthday surprise for a good friend on the last chance for visiting them in Ireland while they live there. Another mutual friend and I flew over to surprise her walking into her flat in the morning of her birthday while her boyfriend organized more local friends to come over for a surprise party. And as my friend has her birthday on St. Patrick's Day (17.03.), we arrived in Dublin exactly to make it also a perfectly fitting timing for the largest traditionally Irish cultural event.

Qualitative evaluation:

+ Good argument in favor of flight (perfect match for a one-time chance)

Aspect 5 - Travel to learn:

Short description:

Some skills can be more easily learned where they come from or are properly done. This includes most obviously languages, but also other local skills like certain methods of producing goods or cultural ways of working / living together in a society. It may also be possible that education or the environment are better fitting for the best learning results in certain areas of the world, which makes “travel to learn” a potentially good argument in favor of taking a flight.

This short trip was a good practice for me for travel blogging and evaluating when flights would be reasonable. While the first one does not require a flight and would be easily manageable on a day- or weekend-trip from Munich to the Alps, evaluating flights for an actual use case was certainly helpful in the process of evaluation and gives a more fitting context for this blogpost. Combining these factors, I evaluated for me that this aspect is not a good argument by itself and did not have any impact on this decision.

Qualitative evaluation:

o Not a good argument by itself —> No impact on decision (only some learnings from flight)

Aspect 6 - Long-term stay:

Short description:

Staying longer than minimum 3 weeks (more than a “usual vacation”) can add much more purpose or “value” to flights based on the other mentioned aspects. It is the longer, the better in this context. I would not need evaluate too long whether a several months long work-related or learning trip with a flight makes for a good reason to take the flight. For example, travelling for min. 3 weeks to West Africa for evaluating how cocoa farmers livelihoods could be improved in the short- and in the long-term could be a good reason to take a flight (take a look at “Aspect 7 - Creating positive impact”). I actually have many thoughts on my mind already how I could make more than just 3 productive weeks out of such a trip to West Africa, but that’s a whole new topic ;-)

Keeping it simple and sticking to the trip to Ireland: Only a 5-day trip is an argument against a flight. It is simply too short to make the flight worth it from my personal point of view

Qualitative evaluation:

- Argument against flight (5 days are simly too short)

Aspect 7 - Creating positive impact:

Short description:

Doing something good for other people, the environment or generally anything that enables a better future (including creating a lot more happiness) are very good purposes in my opinion. Unless the positive impact created is negligible in scale or would have happened anyways, this is one of the main reasons for me why I would still take flights in the future. When in doubt, good orientation questions to ask myself are:

• “Is the positive impact I can create in the location or only by doing the trip larger than the negative impact of a flight?”

• “Could someone else create the same positive impact without having to fly there?”

So, what is my personal evaluation for the flight I took? On the personal and social level, only I initiated the positive impact in terms of reuniting friends and creating lifelong memories with this birthday surprise. In addition, the blogpost which I have now created out of it and maybe more actionable posts that come out of it in the future have potential for more impact.

Qualitative evaluation:

+ Good argument in favor of flight (a surprise reunion for lifelong memories and more blogpost potential)

All aspects together gave sufficient good arguments for me to take this one return flight, which should be well understandable from the short descriptions above. The sum of the qualitative evaluations also equals + (3*+,2*o, 2*-) and makes the result of the evaluation easier to interpret. I presented them in the following table as a summary specifically for my birthday surprise reunion trip to Ireland:

For me it is important that this one decision about a return flight neither opens doors for easier reasons for more flights nor uses up "free flight credit". I will evaluate for every flight whether I have a good enough purpose to take the trip or not.

And in case you were wondering, of course I compensated the flight. In this case I compensated directly with Lufthansa while booking, where they also offer options to compensate emissions both by “usual” compensation projects (restoring peatlands, protecting forests, establish energy-saving cookers etc.), as well as directly reducing emissions with Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF). Giving these options including the prices for different combinations of the two types of compensation and further information for explanation is something I highly appreciate, because it shows how expensive it would be to fly only with more ecologically friendly fuels like SAF. I compensated this flight in addition to compensating my average yearly emissions with TeamClimate in order to be climate neutral in my daily life. They show very easily interpretable quantitative KPis of the compensated CO₂e and the positive impacts of the connected projects since I started compensating in summer 2022.

Now it’s your turn

Were you in a similar situation before and had similar thoughts on your mind? Which other categories are you considering? How did you get to a decision for yourself?

Did you like to follow my thoughts on the topic? Do you think it will help you make up your own mind when you need to take the decision whether you want to take a flight? I’m curious whether my thoughts are going to affect yours in any way.

More readings:

For more details about the beginning of my intention to travel with a purpose, you can check out the related blogpost. In case you’re looking for other means of transport for your vacation, I wrote a blogpost each about an example of longer train travels (Northern Norway from Germany) and about the learnings for my next long-distance hikes.

Feedback

Do you have any feedback or questions? Do you agree or disagree with the aspects and evaluations I made for myself personally?
Would you like me to develop a short decision tree or a simple evaluation tool to make a decision for / against flights easier? Do you know any person or any organization that would need such a tool or do you know such a tool already?
--> If yes, or in case you have any other feedback, please comment or send me a direct message.

Thank you for reading all the way! Our Planet Earth and I appreciate your interest! :-)