Understanding flight free travel

Abstract

Over the last 50 years air travel has become the norm, to the extent that air travel now accounts for around 12% of household emissions in the UK (Carmichael, 2019). A relatively new movement has emerged around flying less and not flying, whose practitioners choose to stay on the ground instead of travelling by air because of aviation’s impact on climate change. While much is known about why air travellers are resistant to flying less, very little is known people who choose to fly less. This thesis analyses meanings of flight free travel from a mobilities and social practices perspective, to compare conventional understandings of air travel with understandings of flight free travel. A mixed-methods approach is used to show how popular representations of flight free travel are characterised in UK newspaper media and how these changed between 2003-2019. This is complemented by a thematic discourse analysis of all blogs on Flight Free UK, a prominent flight free campaigning website. The results of both studies indicate that the practice of flight free travel shares many of the same meanings as the practice of air travel, however, flight free travel is also deeply tied into environmental and moralising narratives that don’t exist in understandings of air travel. Insofar as these meanings of flight free travel and air travel are shared, this study suggests that flight free travel is starting to be understood in terms of conventional travel – a finding that supports evidence that staying on the ground narratives are beginning to destabilise contemporary cultures of aeromobility. Future research might consider further exploring the interlocking elements of flight free travel with childcare, work practices and moments of disruption, to develop possible sites for intervention.

Date of Award	21 Jun 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Dale Southerton (Supervisor) & David M Evans (Supervisor)