CO2 emissions reduction through creating a more sustainable airlines network operation for Europe

Abstract

CO2 emissions reduction in the aviation industry is necessary to accommodate the predicted growth in passenger numbers and movements when following the targets of the Paris Agreement. A focus area of reducing CO2 emissions is optimising operational aspects of the aviation industry. This research focuses on analysing and benchmarking the bigger European airlines on their CO2 emissions per passenger nautical mile (nm) with the use of flight schedules, fuel burn numbers, fleet and seat configurations and load factors. Low-cost carriers produce less CO2 emissions per passenger nm than full-service carriers with Transavia as the most sustainable airline. The average flight distance is decisive for this ranking and is closely followed by the load factors. Nevertheless, there is still a gap of 0.039 kg CO2 emissions between Transavia and a best network option. Therefore, airlines should calculate the gap towards this best network option and adapt the influencing factors with the highest impact.