Liverpool Football Club have come under fire following their decision to take a domestic flight back from their away game against Newcastle United this weekend. The club has blamed the move on fixture congestion, and taken aim at the Premier League for giving such a minimal turnaround until their next game, on Tuesday.
The flight in question
While most English professional football matches kick off at the traditional time of 15:00 on a Saturday, certain fixtures are moved each weekend to allow for TV broadcast coverage. Liverpool's away match against Newcastle United this past weekend was one of these, and it instead got underway at 17:30 local time.
The Reds ran out 2-0 winners, with the game, according to the Daily Mirror, concluding at around 19:20. The squad's subsequent journey home was by air, with the plane in question being a 20.88-year-old Boeing 737-700 operated by 2Excel Aviation. Bearing the registration G-NEWG, data from ch-aviation.com shows that this ex-Scandinavian Airlines twinjet has 62 business class seats.
According to FlightRadar24.com, the aircraft departed Newcastle Airport (NCL) just over two hours later, at 21:37. After 33 minutes in the air, having cruised at a maximum altitude of 15,000 feet, G-NEWG touched down at Liverpool John Lennon Airport (LPL) at 22:10. While an easy ride home, the flight attracted certain criticism.
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All about recovery and preparation
Indeed, the club came under fire for the fact that taking such a flight undermines their sustainability credentials. After all, as the Daily Mirror notes, last year saw Liverpool FC be named the Premier League's greenest club by Sport Positive. They also has their own sustainability program called 'Reds Going Green,' and a Bionic study ranked their Anfield stadium as the 11th-greenest in the Premier League.
However, in this instance, the club has argued that it was forced to compromise its sustainability credentials due to fixture congestion. With their next match, a UEFA Champions League tie against Real Madrid, being on Tuesday night, the Newcastle game being pushed back to Saturday evening minimized recovery time.
As such, with the later arrival traveling by coach back to Liverpool would have caused and its potential to impact players' recovery and preparation for the next game, the Liverpool Echo notes that, in this instance, it was in the club's interests to fly. However, with Newcastle being just 175 miles (282 km) from Liverpool, some might argue that the difference would only have been an hour or two.
A contentious topic
Furthermore, the fact that the team traveled up to Newcastle on their coach earlier that day will likely have meant that the same vehicle returned to Liverpool just about empty. As such, it isn't just the emissions of the flight that made the choice to return home by air a controversial one. Simple Flying has contacted Liverpool FC for further information, and will update this article as required.
Of course, Liverpool are far from the only team that takes such flights, and, indeed, the topic has become one of the most contentious in the realms of sustainability and English football. For example, Nottingham Forest came under fire last month for flying to and from their FA Cup Third Round match away at Blackpool.
Teams prioritize performance, but that isn't to say that sustainability isn't considered. According to the Daily Mirror, Chelsea's Graham Potter said that,
"...how we fly to Premier League games is something to consider. (...) It isn't straightforward, but, if we are serious about it, which we should be, then we should think about it."
Sources: Bionic, ch-aviation.com, Daily Mirror, FlightRadar24.com, Liverpool Echo, Liverpool FC