Summer 2022’s rollcall of travel delays, cancellations and terminal chaos is more than inconvenient for travellers and transportation providers.
The airline travel surge is hard on the environment and the global aviation industry’s aspirations to rein in its carbon footprint.
According to the most recent International Air Transport Association data, Asia-Pacific airlines as of May reached a four-month year-on-year recovery rate of 453 per cent. That has helped push international revenue passenger kilometres to 64 per cent of pre-COVID levels.
That might be encouraging for airlines hammered over the past two years by the pandemic, but the rapid acceleration of air travel has also accelerated the need for the sector to figure out how it is going to reduce the amount of pollution it adds to the world’s air shed.
The addition of e-kerosene, biofuels and hydrogen to the fuel that airlines use will account for the lion’s share of aviation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction solution.
Better airline freight payload management and traffic efficiency will also help, but passenger demand is a critical factor.
As Dan Rutherford, the International Council on Clean Transportation’s (ICCT) director of aviation and marine programs, pointed out during a presentation of the ICCT’s Vision 2050 Aligning Aviation With The Paris Agreement report, if pre-COVID’s seven per cent annual increase in airline passenger traffic were to continue through to 2050, any gains in CO2 reductions achieved with widespread air traffic technological improvements would be nullified.
So, the cost of that flight to Mexico for a week of fiesta and siesta is more than financial. It carries with it an environmental price tag.
The rise in fuel costs associated with the inclusion of sustainable aviation fuel in commercial airline operations might help fund more innovation to reduce air travel’s environmental impact, but its effect on overall passenger demand could also help by making people think twice about how they travel and where.
