Airline Chiefs Slam European Countries over Green Taxes and Overdue Reform of Inefficient Airspace

(GreenAir Online) Chief executives from Europe’s biggest airlines called for urgent reform and modernisation of European airspace that they said could eliminate around 25 million tonnes of CO2 a year and save €17.4 billion ($19.4bn) in fuel and related socio-economic costs. IAG’s Willie Walsh said it was “scandalous” that after many decades, the Single European Sky still had not been implemented. Speaking at the Airlines for Europe (A4E) Annual Summit this week, the CEOs also criticised attempts to tax passengers and fuel on environmental grounds, saying none of the revenues were used to help the industry decarbonise. Instead, the EU should ensure the full implementation of the global CORSIA carbon offsetting scheme and pursue a long-term carbon goal at ICAO. They also urged EU States to take legislative action and policy decisions to boost the development and uptake of sustainable aviation fuels.

Air France-KLM CEO Benjamin Smith, who has been elected as A4E’s Chairman for 2020, said airlines were united to make the new European Green Deal a success.

Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr believes the German presidency of the EU Council could make the issue a priority. Passenger convenience in less travel times and money savings used to be the main arguments in favour of reform but now there was “a new argument in town” in the form of carbon savings, he said.

Another area for environmental improvement was in synthetic and sustainable aviation fuels, said Spohr. “This is surely the most realistic and effective means to seriously reduce emissions from aviation in the next decades. They have the mid and long term potential to reduce emissions by 85-90%.

“However, volumes of these fuels are way, way too small. As example, if my airline had access to all the SAF available in the world, it would only last 36 hours. So we have major issues around availability and the cost, which is around four to five times more than fossil fuel currently. In a highly competitive industry like ours, none of us can afford the extra cost. It is also important that in order to ensure a level playing field, our regulators don’t push us into [mandated] fuels unless it is done worldwide, otherwise it decreases the competitiveness of European airlines.”

Spohr said Lufthansa had a carbon compensation scheme in which passengers could buy SAF, which in turn allowed the airline to buy SAF volumes in San Francisco but he admitted take-up had been limited.

“So we need to bring the cost of SAF significantly down and bring the availability up,” he said. “We believe this is a huge opportunity for EU policy makers to play a leading role in the future of decarbonising our sector. A4E calls upon the European Commission to make SAF production a policy priority and national policies should support this. Research and development should be incentivised to ensure billions of litres of these fuels become available. Financing circles should also be created so, for example, money taken in aviation taxes could be used to support SAF investment.”

EasyJet CEO Johan Lundgren said his airline had paid €650 million ($720m) in taxes apart from EU ETS costs last year. “None of them goes into what we are trying to do, which is to decarbonise. The taxes don’t incentivise efficient flying. We’re not afraid of taxes but what we want is to ensure those taxes are linked to how efficient we are operating, not to get people to fly less.”

Walsh said last year IAG had paid €967 million ($1.1bn) in UK Air Passenger Duty, which had been introduced as an environmental tax. “Not one single cent went into environmental research or support,” he said. READ MORE includes VIDEO