Airline industry working together to reduce carbon emissions
By Darren Cronian on Friday, November 14th, 2008

Whilst at World Travel Market I sat in one of the seminars on airlines and their impact on the environment. The programme of events did not give too much away but it had an interesting line up which included representatives from British Airways and Virgin Atlantic.

Airline industry working together to reduce carbon emissions

Replacement for air passenger duty

Apparently, the government is to announce that they intend to replace the air passenger duty with a “tax-per-flight” where the charge will depend on the destination, route, and carbon emissions. The government increased air passenger duty to boost funds to research bio fuels and reducing carbon emissions.

Taxes not spent on environment

All four speakers agreed that the government had not spent all of the millions of extra revenue generated through air passenger duty on helping the environment. I am not sure if I heard this right, but I think BA said that it had collected £350million in air passenger taxes for the government in the last two years.

Research on biofuels continues

It is encouraging to hear that airlines are working together as an industry to research biofuels, but it will take another 5 to 10 years before we start to see airlines using more environmentally friendly fuel. Airlines are developing new environmentally friendly airplanes, but again this is not a quick solution as it takes up to 10 years for an airplane to go through design, manufacturing, testing, launch.

Consumer communication issues

An interesting point from one speaker, that the airline industry is not good at communicating with consumers about what the industry is doing to help reduce carbon emissions. I nodded my head a few times at that statement.

Do you think will we see a completely environmentally friendly airplane or airline in ten years time?


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2 responses to “Airline industry working together to reduce carbon emissions”

Kelly | 14 November, 2008 at 4:45 pm

I do hope so because I feel a smack of guilt everytime I book a flight for a short break. I just don’t have the time to do the more responsible thing after I fly and ‘stay longer’. I wish :)

Virgin Galatic may be developing aviation in a more eco-frienldy direction. The minute the industry realises that there’s money to be made in this area, I’m sure we’ll see them following suit.

Virgin Galatic’s ‘Eve’ plane is ‘Powered by four Pratt and Whitney PW308A engine – powerful, economic and efficient – WK2 is a mold breaker in carbon efficiency’

I can’t wait for it to go mainstream … hopefully within ten yrs

There more if you’re interested here http://sandwagon.blogspot.com/search?q=virgin&submit=Go

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Murray Harrold | 16 November, 2008 at 10:16 pm

This is a very interesting, I am wondering how the tax per flight will work and am keen to see the proposals. We pay this GB tax on all our ticket at present and varies from £10 to about £40 depending on where we are going and if in cattle or up front with the driver. Given how many flights there are from LHR alone, it is not difficult to work out that it is a tidy sum. Now, “envoirnmentally friendly” and “aeroplane” go together like “military” and “intelligence”, as the old addage goes. The only way you get get an envoirenmentally friendly aeroplane is to park it on the ground, turn the engines off and take the train. I am not too sure how you can spend the money “on the envoirenment” (I can’t even spell it!!)how are you going to do this? Plant a squirrel every time one takes off? These stealth taxes, thinly veiled as “planet saving” are really a joke and really do hack me off. I saw the local bus, the same one that has plied the route for the last heavens nows how many years, suddenly being plastered with signs saying it is now “green” EH????? It still chucks out diesel smoke – how can it suddenly be “green”? Likewise all these lorries that are suddenly painted green and carry nice, friendly, comforting messages saying they are green…. Look, no-one is getting fooled by this. Green means less flights, more electric trains. Green does not mean driving a Honda Prius when the factory that makes the batteries lays waste half of a Canadian state, it does mean recylcing slavishly when it takes more out the planet to process the stuff – and all the time our taxes go up on this baloney. Sorry, going off topic. So, new runay, case in point. The Government can talk the green talk, let’s see if they can walk the green walk……

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