“High fuel efficiency is good for the environment”: Balancing gains in fuel efficiency against trends in absolute consumption in the passenger aviation sector

Abstract

Following mounting concerns about climate change induced by commercial flights, the aviation industry has reacted with narratives that emphasize the increase in fuel efficiency (fuel/passenger-km) of its operations. However, climate change is due to absolute fuel burnt. In this regard, this article compares trends in fuel efficiency with absolute fuel burnt considering passenger flights from nine European airports in 2018 versus 1996. Within this sample, this article found that fuel/seat-km over this period decreased by about 30%, while the absolute fuel burnt increased 2.5 times. An exploration of the drivers of this increase revealed that it occurred in the provision of air services on preexisting and new routes mostly longer than 1,000 km. Low-cost carriers were a significant contributor to this growth if one considers relative terms and smaller airports, but not absolute terms. These results question the ability of high-speed rail to significantly offset the impacts of aviation on climate.

Keywords:

• Aviation
• climate change
• fuel efficiency
• GHG emissions

Acknowledgement

This article develops the intermediate results obtained by Charbel Ibrahim during his work experience at Université libre de Bruxelles as an ENTPE master’s student.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Retrieved from https://www.norwegian.com on July 26, 2019.

2 http://www.aerotransport.org

3 https://www.eurocontrol.int/tool/small-emitters-tool

4 Since Charleroi Airport notably serves as a secondary airport for Brussels, the results are also displayed merged.

5 The main exception to this scheme is the long-haul flight segment from Charleroi Airport (CRL). These flights are operated with large Airbus 340-300 aircraft. Because the runway was too short at the time, the airline was forced to curb capacity to 240 or 257 seats to limit weight at take-off and thus content itself with the runway length. In comparison, the typical two-class layout capacity is 335 seats.