20 April 2021: On 20 April, EUROCOTNROL published its 10^th Think Paper: Flying the ‘perfect green flight’: How can we make every journey as environmentally friendly as possible? The paper looks at the different aspects of a flight and identifies the opportunities to improve the sustainability at each stage of a flight and challenges faced.

A lot can be achieved to make flights more efficient and greener at every stage of a flight and by every stakeholder involved. There are six main findings:

1. The perfect green flight can be achieved by making better use of existing measures and collaboration of all stakeholders involved. The Paper estimates that by 2030 there could be a 25.8% in CO2 reductions per flight compared to 2019.
2. Better use of fuel-efficient ATM improvements could deliver 8.6%-11.2% of CO2 reductions. To achieve this, it is necessary to transition from SESAR R&D to deployment, therefore, realising the Single European Sky.
3. Hybrid, full-electric and hydrogen airplanes will transform aviation between 2030-2050, allowing aviation to reach net-zero by 2050, especially on short- medium routes, while SAF is to be used on the long haul segment.
4. Sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) is the most promising solution for the short term. 10% use of SAF by 2030 could deliver an 8% CO2 reduction – this is possible if uptake is accelerated. 20% of SAF by 2030 would be too ambitious and challenging to achieve.
5. Airlines can play a significant role in CO2 reductions, but greater incentives are needed to allow for fleet renewal, reduce risk of fuel tankering, collaboration with airports to use Ground Power Units and optimise fuel efficiency of existing fleets.
6. More attention needs to be paid to noise and non-CO2 impacts.

You can find the full paper here [1].