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It seems eons ago that the term flygskam, or flight shame, entered the vocabularies of airline executives after a Swedish teenager decided to aim her climate-change activism at the air transport industry.
The cynic might observe that Greta Thunberg’s demands for people to stop flying were answered, but in the most devastatingly cruel and, in the end, temporary way. The COVID virus brought commercial flying to a standstill in 2020 while also killing millions of people worldwide. Ironically, if Thunberg cares to notice, millions more were saved by medical equipment and vaccines that were transported via airliners.
Since those dark days, airlines have massively stepped up, and invested in, initiatives to further reduce emissions and flying’s impact on the Earth, despite going deep into the red and accumulating crippling debt because of the revenue losses through the initial pandemic months.
But the aviation sustainability challenge is only getting more complicated and difficult. Global demand for air travel is extremely strong. Figures released by IATA for March showed demand for international air travel is particularly robust—some 19% higher than a year earlier. Domestic demand, meanwhile, increased almost 7% year-over-year, returning to more normal pre-pandemic levels.
People want to fly. It’s good when people learn about other cultures firsthand. It’s good when trade and tourism bring wealth and growth to impoverished economies. And it’s imperative that airlines serve that need.
Against that, however, SAF availability is becoming an even more rare and expensive commodity as demand for it, too, soars. Yet widespread, affordable SAF remains the best—almost only—solution towards meeting the industry’s 2030 and 2050 emissions reduction targets.
How to bridge the gap? There’s a lot of talk about collaboration and partnerships. They are critical. But the most influential partners in the sustainable aviation quest are the world’s governments and political leaders. They alone can change the dynamics of the fossil-fuel suppliers and markets and create long-lasting, stable policies that reduce the demand for fossil fuels not just from airlines, but from industries and populations generally.
Globally, there are many important state and regional elections expected this year. This adds uncertainty to the longevity of government SAF incentives where they exist, such as in the US. Will they continue if there is a political leadership change? In that respect, 2024 is a dangerous year for aviation, which desperately needs long-term policies on SAF production.
Looked at another way, this could be a year of opportunity. New incoming government leaders might finally grasp the political benefit of being seen to champion the two things people want: to be able to fly and to do it sustainably.
That may be too much common sense to credit any politician. But politicians tend to fly a lot, too. It’s time they played their full part in a problem that, for all their significant efforts, airlines alone cannot solve.
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