This is the Guardian.

Today, if airlines are taking the climate crisis so seriously,

then why are so many of the planes they're flying empty?

For a brief surreal moment in the UK a couple of weeks ago, it seemed like everybody was watching BigJet TV.

It's so easy! Gotta get it down soon mate. Yeah, nicely done!

Freak weather brought winds gusting over 120 miles an hour to the UK,

playing havoc with airplanes landing at Heathrow. All of it streamed online to hundreds of thousands of people watching on YouTube.

You got to wave a swing there! You got down! Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!

Got a wing's flexing man. He's got it, he's got it.

It was pretty nail-biting, but it ended okay. Nobody was hurt. Everyone landed safely.

Thanks largely to the skills of pilots who, on each flight, hold the lives of hundreds of passengers in their hands.

Except when those flights aren't carrying hundreds of passengers, or sometimes, anyone at all.

Those are called ghost flights.

A ghost flight is a flight which has got no passengers or very few.

We're talking about having fewer than 10% of the passengers on board.

And obviously it doesn't make a lot of sense when you think about it that these should fly, but lots of them do.

Damian Carrington is the Guardians Environment Editor, and he's been on a ghost flight himself.

It was pretty weird. I was about 20 years ago, I was in San Francisco, and I was trying to get back to the UK for Christmas.

There was literally nobody else in the cabin. I was in an economy class, of course.

It's a bit weird when they're doing the safety demo. You feel like you really have to pay attention, because you're the only member of the audience.

I also think it's a lie across about four seats and sleep pretty much all the way back, so there was an upside to that.

It's your own little private jet. It was a very big private jet with lots of staff.

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