For some routes, only aviation can provide a timely connection. This is true for some shorter hops, over water or where a land connection is difficult, but mostly this is a question of distance. In 2020, some 6% of flights from European airports were clearly long-haul, crossing more than 4000 km.
For passengers and for urgent or high-value cargo, there is little or no alternative on such routes. The importance of long-haul is even more clear when measured in capacity, rather than flights. For example, on the passenger side, these 6% of flights carry 10% of total seats and more than 40% of seat-kilometres (the usual measure of passenger capacity in the industry).
The chart shows, however, that there is an environmental cost. Longer distances naturally mean longer duration flights, and mostly by larger aircraft (hence the higher proportion of seats). That has a significant cost in terms of CO2. In 2020, more than half of European aviation’s CO2 emissions were from this tiny proportion of the overall number of flights. We have mentioned in other data snapshots how COVID-19 has affected the mix of longer- and shorter-haul flights. But this domination of emissions by a few longer-haul flights is not COVID-related: in 2019, the 6% that were long-haul had a 48% share of CO2, very similar to 2020.
At the opposite end of the scale, the 31% of flights under 500 km had only a 4% share of CO2 (24% of flights with 3.8% of CO2 in 2019). Short-haul is an excellent candidate for early electrification, amongst other initiatives, to reduce its environmental impact. These improvements will be needed if aviation is to meet its sustainability targets. However, these data show that the maximum possible saving in short-haul is about 4% of the total CO2. Increasing the supply of sustainable aviation fuel to cover just 10% of the needs of long-haul, would do more than can ever be done in short-haul to reduce net CO2 emissions.
Source: Eurocontrol
Dear Mr Orban,
Thanks for your very informative article “Half of CO2 enissions come from just 6 % of flights: the long-haul ones”. May I ask you the following three questions:
When you discuss CO2 emissions from aviation, are you talking about CO2 or CO2-equivalents? (The difference can be up to 35 %)
Is there any figure known for EU’s total CO2 flight emissions (2000) in million tons of CO2?
Share of annual flights: do your figures in % refer to all air planes: passenger aircrafts, aircrafts transporting only goods such as mail, medicines etc, military aircrafts, small private air planes – or only passenger aircrafts?
Thanks for your effort.
Horst Köhler (Germany)
[email protected]