Rising prices for standard aviation fuel as well as emission allowances are the main causes of increasing air travel. But it doesn’t end there. According to the head of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), flying is to be counted on to grow even more expensive for the foreseeable future.
Greener air travel
IATA chief executive Willie Walsh called for speeding up the transition from existing fossil fuels used for air travel to “greener” ones. According to him, this is one of the ways to relieve airlines, which are facing dramatically increasing costs of classic aviation fuels from fossil sources.
But even switching to greener fuel types will not mean that air travel should be made cheaper. It’s more about slowing the growth of its price. “You can’t expect the airline industry to be able to absorb general raisings of almost everything and want to operate at an average profit of one dollar per passenger,” Walsh told Reuters.
SAF production surge
The IATA chief cited the example of the United States, where there was a substantial increase in the production of so-called aviation sustainable fuel (SAF — Sustainable Aviation Fuels) in response to the increase of fossil fuels. Europe should follow the same path, according to Walsh.
