As usual, it looks like the green lobby missed a trick with their pointless protest against BA’s new flights from Gatwick to Newquay, which started this week.

They chose to target the CO2 emmissions of the industry as a whole, and to say that these flights should not be needed, because the route is a very short one, and people should travel by train instead for domestic journeys.

Newquay airport countered by saying that the train service to Newquay was actually pretty lousy (let’s face it, it is), and that a fair comparison needs to take into account that trains usually only operate at 30% occupancy.

Their figures suggested that the CO2 emmissions per passenger for the flights would be no greater than the train journey, because these flights should be around 75% full.

So when Greenpeace turned up to give their usual tirade, it looks like there were almost as many protesters as passengers, since only 34 people turned up for the Gatwick to Newquay leg. There were also just 18 passengers on the return flight.

Considering all the free publicity that Greenpeace and chums have given BA about this new route, I would have expected more people to have wanted to use it. Of course, it is early days yet, but as we already commented last week, this route now has three airlines competiting against each other. I would still expect more passengers to travel with Air Southwest, who offer a much higher frequency of service on this route.

Maybe this route will pick up over the summer, maybe it will not, but I wouldn’t be too surprised to see it quietly dropped at the end of the season.

Then, Greenpeace can have their little organic beer party and dance a merry jig about the nanogram of C02 which will have been saved, but the simple reality is that this route will thrive or fall on pure commercial logic. As it happens, commercial logic will also be environmental logic, as is so often the case.