Tag: airline

European LCC easyJet has been an early mover in the airline sustainability space. It was one the more proactive airlines when climate change concerns started appearing on airline radars pre Covid.

Yesterday it released an accelerated road-map to net zero.  This includes three bets, which mark a departure from its previous plans. We’ll look at each of them, and what it means:

1 – A bet on Zero emissions aircraft over SAF

Yesterday’s Sustainability in the Air newsletter talked about the EASA report, which showed that Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) will need to do much of the heavy lifting on the road to net zero.  

This mirrors similar findings in earlier reports such as that published by the ICCT.  easyJet is however making a different bet.  Its 2050 roadmap shows almost half the target will be met by Zero Carbons Emissions Aircraft.

2 – A bet on hydrogen over

This article originally appeared in our Sustainability in the Air Newsletter.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Assembly is currently taking place in Montreal, with a key focus being on sustainability.  As part of that, controversies around the industry’s Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) programme are emerging, with one group accusing it of being a “climate fraud.”

CORSIA is seen by the industry as a key tool in the journey to netzero. Under the scheme, emissions were originally meant to be capped at 2020 levels, with carbon offsets accounting for any increase.

Of course, 2020 turned out to be an abnormal year due to COVID travel restrictions. And so, IATA had suggested to ICAO that the baseline be set at full 2019 levels. The compromise that looks to be adopted is that the boundary will lie at 85% of 2019 levels.

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November 29, 2022

IS IT JUST ME, or is the entire air travel experience broken right now?

Security lines are endless, terminals are noisier and more crowded than ever, airport lounges have become overcrowded feeding troughs, onboard service isn’t half of what it was pre-pandemic, delays and cancellations are rampant. And so on; it’s across the board.

Initially, as the COVID-19 fiasco wound down, most of the trouble could be blamed on a lack of staffing. Passengers came back faster than expected, and the industry wasn’t ready. The resulting chaos was unpleasant, but was expected to be temporary. Yet here we are on the cusp of 2023, and although things aren’t as dysfunctional as they were six or eight months ago, they still feel badly off-kilter.

What troubles me most is that we seem to be resigning ourselves to it. I fear that we’re plateauing at a sort of “new