Average Fleet Age: A Pragmatic Metric in Airline Net-Zero Progress
For too long, airlines have bragged about their sustainability initiatives, with many, like CO2 offsetting programs, amounting to little more than greenwashing.
However, the landscape is shifting. More and more so-called “green” airline initiatives are being unmasked as mostly marketing stunts. Last week’s aviation news illustrates this shift. UK watchdogs have banned advertisements by Air France-KLM , 汉莎航空 , and Etihad for making misleading “green travel” claims. Some of the ads in question stated consumers could have “total peace of mind” over their environmental credentials, thereby projecting an image of environmental responsibility that is simply false. A similar backlash, as reported by Aero Time, has recently hit other airlines, including Virgin Atlantic and British Airways . These incidents underscore the difficulty in differentiating truly impactful net-zero initiatives, like IAG's co-development of new SAF facilities, from irrelevant PR talk.?
The Reality Behind Green Claims
At the Sustainable Aero Lab, our goal is not to vilify aviation. On the contrary, we are aviation enthusiasts ourselves who couldn’t be prouder of the immense value of connecting the world through commercial flight – it's one of humanity's greatest achievements!
But the time has come for our industry to confront the carbon crisis head-on. We must bridge the gap between perceived sustainability efforts and genuine, impactful progress. The first step? We must introduce transparency in tracking real net-zero progress by airlines. We need clear, measurable, and practical methods to compare airlines, revealing who truly leads in sustainable practices.
In our latest Net-Zero Newsletter, we explored a handful of critical data sources supporting the journey towards accountability. We also began developing our Sustainability Airline Index, highlighting the real leaders in Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) use. This ranking wasn’t about those who talk about SAF the most, but airlines that actually integrate the highest SAF percentages into their jet fuel mix.
Today, we’re introducing another pragmatic metric to further uncover which carriers are operating more sustainably than others.
Fleet Age: A Key Indicator of Airline Sustainability
When assessing an airline's true commitment to reducing its carbon footprint, one crucial metric stands out: the average age of its fleet. This figure serves as an indirect reflection of how modern and efficient an airline's fleet might be. The rule of thumb is clear: the younger the fleet, the lower its CO2 emissions. This correlation largely stems from technological advancements. Each new generation of commercial aircraft is usually 15% to 25% more fuel-efficient than its predecessor, thanks to ongoing advancements in aerodynamics, lighter aircraft materials, and engine efficiency.
However, it's important to understand that “average fleet age” is only a rough proxy for assessing the level of CO2 efficiency of an airline's fleet. Ideally, a more accurate assessment would involve examining each aircraft type individually, but this level of detailed analysis is often hampered by data availability. Therefore, we have chosen “average fleet age” as a practical indicator, while acknowledging that it should be taken with a grain of salt.?
Despite its relevance, average fleet age comparisons are rarely spotlighted in analyst reports. While most airlines officially report their fleet age in annual reports, making it relatively easy to research, it remains an underrepresented metric in public sustainability debates. As of today, there isn't a single comprehensive public source that outlines the average fleet age for the entire airline industry on a consistent basis. Without a doubt, this needs to change.
Ranking the World's Top 20 Airlines by Fleet Age
Given this lack of transparency, we've researched the officially reported average fleet ages of all the major airlines in the world. We focused our research on the world's 20 largest airline groups (based on total revenue), as these carriers transport the most passengers and thus have the largest impact on aviation’s CO2 emissions. By focusing on these larger airlines, we also avoid skewing the ranking with very small regional airlines, whose average fleet ages can be easily impacted by outliers.
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Here is what the top-20 airline ranking looks like in numbers.
What is your initial reaction? Please let us know in the comments.
There are a couple of important takeaways from this chart.
1. Asian Airlines Lead in Fleet Modernization
The top five airlines with the youngest fleets are all based in Asia. Despite common critiques of Asia lagging in sustainability efforts, its commitment to modernizing aircraft fleets tells a different story.?
However, it's crucial to recognize that these commitments may not be primarily driven by sustainability goals. The significant growth in air travel demand in Asia has necessitated the acquisition of new aircraft. Furthermore, the high service standards and competitive “luxury” nature of the aviation market in the region, often supported by government involvement, play a significant role in this trend.
2. Legacy Carriers in Europe and North America Lag Behind
Most well-known legacy carriers in Europe and North America, including Lufthansa Group , Air France-KLM, American Airlines , Delta Air Lines , and United Airlines , all rank in the lower half of the list. This can partly be attributed to their relatively high proportion of older, less efficient aircraft. For instance, Lufthansa continues to operate gas-guzzlers like the Boeing 747-400s, A340-300s, and A340-600s. United Airlines maintains a fleet of older 757s and 767s, while Delta still flies the 717.?
However, it's crucial to note that these airlines may not benefit from the same level of government funding or market conditions as their Asian peers, impacting their ability to modernize their fleets. Nevertheless, we cannot hide behind such excuses. The harsh reality is that the airline industry's current CO2 projections will be challenging to reverse if we continue to rely on aircraft with an average age of, for instance, 16+ years, as seen with United Airlines.
From Words to Actions
Today’s post is just another example of why we need to look beyond airline press releases to truly understand the tangible progress airlines are making towards their net-zero goals. As we've seen, the average fleet age is a powerful indicator, but it's just one piece of the puzzle.
In our next Net-Zero Newsletter edition, we will unveil another metric to gauge and rank airlines based on their true progress towards a net-zero future. This will be another step in our ongoing effort to provide clear, data-driven insights into the sustainability actions of the aviation industry.
We encourage you to join the conversation and contribute to refining and evolving our approach. This challenge is not one to be tackled in isolation; it calls for a collaborative effort. Together, we can turn commitments into actions and aspirations into realities.
Aviation worker campaigning for a sustainable future.
11 个月Having spent many years working on making aircraft engines more efficient and hoping I was doing a good thing, I made this video explaining why aviation efficiency actually super charges air traffic growth. This leads to total emissions increasing, not reducing: https://youtu.be/_w2jvxW-Kt4?si=fO0EoBsuEfWKh7dO We'll never get to "Net Zero" by relying on efficiency improvements. Look at the past 50 years history: there have been massive improvements in aircraft efficiency but emissions have been rising rapidly. That's all the planet cares about. The key point is that without an emissions budget and associated limits on air traffic and/or jet fuel use to ensure we stay within that budget - focusing on efficiency improvements is a distraction. Once we're in a scenario where jet fuel use and emissions are under control and reducing each year, *then* efficiency improvements allow us to fly more within that budget and are good. The key metric should be whether airlines admit to this publicly and commit to lobbying activities which don't delay vital policies related to carbon budgets, action on contrails, emissions pricing, jet fuel tax, etc.
Retired at Airbus
11 个月If you increase efficiency by 20% and double the size of your fleet, you increase emissions by 60%. The timescale to introduce the sort of innovations that will reduce emissions sufficiently to meet climate change targets is not commensurate with airlines plans for growth. There is not enough land resource in the world to power aviation with SAF and feed the people. The average age of the fleet becomes irrelevant when faced with the urgency of our situation.
Future Energy Global | Aviation Sustainability & Strategy
11 个月I very much enjoy your newsletters - please keep up the challenging critique! You write "The rule of thumb is clear: the younger the fleet, the lower its CO2 emissions." That's not quite true. Yes, we can say there's a rule of thumb that the younger the aircraft, the lower *its* CO2 emissions (assuming we keep the aircraft size constant). But many of the airlines with huge orders for new aircraft are using those planes for expansion, rather than replacement, so their total emissions are going up & up. Which is more sustainable? a. An airline flying a constant number of 15-year-old aircraft b. An airline buying new aircraft and growing by 25% per year It's certainly useful to look at emissions intensity (i.e. grams of CO2e per passenger km) and this is something that Ryanair and Wizz Air particularly like to boast about. Certainly a brand new A321neo with 234 seats packed into it will be more efficient in terms of gCO2e/pax-km than a 15-year-old A320ceo or maybe even an ATR72. If capacity is constant and the new aircraft are displacing the older ones, that's great. But the global fleet is projected to more than double in the next 20 years (source: Airbus GMF 2023), so even with new aircraft, there's a huge increase in emissions.