Flight Emissions Label

Enabling aviation decarbonisation

The Flight Emissions Label (FEL) empowers passengers to make informed decisions by providing clear and trusted information about their carbon emissions. It relies on real data from past flight performance to label flight in the future.

Its aim is to provide the means for passengers to understand and compare the carbon impact of travel purchase decisions.

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Why do we need a Flight Emissions Label?

Ensuring that passengers are well-informed about the environmental impact of flights is a crucial part of the transition to a lower carbon economy by enabling sustainable choices.

EASA initiated a survey in 2019 with feedback received up until 2020. Responses from over 9,500 participants from 18 European Countries gave some clear indications of the need for a label. While 80% of air passengers claim they would like to know the amount of greenhouse gas produced by the flights they take, only 5% of passengers declare having access to such information. Different options to provide this to the flying public were explored during a pilot project coordinated by EASA, which was the predecessor of the FEL.

Transparency is vital in this process, and to achieve this the European Commission and EASA have created this platform which creates labels using data from airline performance based on new European laws. When booking flights, passengers will be able to see standardised emissions information derived from data from actual flight performance.

This initiative is the first of its kind worldwide and the first one to place passengers at its core.

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What does this mean for me as a passenger?

The Flight Emissions Label (FEL) provides reliable information on greenhouse gas emissions for each flight option and integrates it into the ticket purchase experience.
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠It enables the reduction of a carbon footprint for passengers by highlighting flights with lower emissions information calculated from actual flights.
The FEL empowers travellers to participate in the decarbonisation of air travel by sending a clear signal to the industry regarding the preference for lower emission flights.

What makes the FEL different from other estimates of flight emissions?

Almost all estimates of passenger carbon emissions in aviation are currently made based on assumed aircraft performance, passenger traffic and SAF use.

The Flight Emissions Label replaces the use of assumptions with data on real airline performance, including aircraft fuel consumption, passenger traffic and SAF purchases.

The result is a label which reflects real-world flight performance, where many small changes to airline operations and sustainability initiatives together can dramatically lower the climate impact of aviation. This enables passengers to support aviation decarbonisation by making informed flight choices based on the label.

Understanding what shapes a flight’s emissions performance

A Flight Emissions Label is issued considering multiple elements such as the fuel efficiency of an aircraft type, how its cabin is divided into classes, the flight range, data on passenger and cargo loads as well as the use of lower-carbon fuels.

Short-haul flights

A passenger flying economy short haul (1400 km) would produce a footprint of approximately 150kg of CO₂eq. Selecting an alternative ticket may reduce the emissions in the following ways:

Selecting a flight with a newer generation aircraft providing better fuel consumption may reduce emissions by 20%, reducing the passenger footprint by 30 kg of CO₂eq.
A newer aircraft flight using 5% of lower carbon fuels (75% lifecycle carbon reduction) could save another 4kg of CO₂eq or more for the passenger.
A flight may be more full than others on average to reduce the per passenger footprint by sharing the total flight GHG emissions between more passengers and cargo. An additional 10 people on board the same aircraft may reduce a passenger footprint by 6%, or over 8kg of CO₂eq.
If the original selected short-haul flight was in Business Class, changing class down to economy may reduce the carbon footprint by over 30% (75kg of CO₂eq), depending on the aircraft configuration.

Long-haul flights

A passenger flying economy long haul (6,000 km each way) would produce a footprint of approximately 560kg of CO2eq. Selecting an alternative ticket may reduce the emissions in the following ways:

Selecting a flight with a newer generation aircraft providing better fuel consumption may reduce emissions 12.5%, reducing the passenger footprint by 70 kg of CO₂eq.
A newer aircraft flight using 5% of lower carbon fuels (75% lifecycle carbon reduction) could save another 18kg of CO₂eq or more for the passenger.
A flight may be more full than others on average to reduce the per passenger footprint by sharing the total flight GHG emissions between more passengers and cargo. An additional 10 people and half a ton of cargo on board the same aircraft may reduce a passenger footprint by 6%, or nearly 34kg of CO₂eq.
If the original selected long-haul flight was in Business Class, changing down to economy may reduce the carbon footprint by over 70% depending on the aircraft configuration.

A flight emissions label can display how customer selection with the same airline, route and class can select flights with as much as 25% or more lower emissions, with larger savings available by changing class.

How does the FEL compare to other consumer labels?

In the same way as an energy label helps consumers reduce the environmental impacts of household energy, the flight emissions label enables passengers to reduce the emissions impact of aviation on climate.

The annual average personal footprint in the EU is 7,5 tonnes of CO2eq and the EU energy label exists to help consumers make decisions regarding household appliances. In 2020, EU households consumed 62% less power than in 1992, when the energy label was introduced.

The EU energy label allows consumers to make purchase decisions between more or less efficient technologies. An example would be a refrigerator rated A and another rated F may have a difference of 200kWh/annum - equivalent to an annual saving of 40 kg to 60 kg of CO2eq.

This means selecting one flight of the same class and destination with a newer aircraft alone may save as much CO2eq each year as purchasing a best-in-class refrigerator instead of one with a lower energy label rating.

Scale of energy efficiency classes from A to G.
The energy efficiency class of this product.
Annual energy consumption in kWh.
The sum of the volumes of the frozen compartment(s) in litres.
The sum of the volumes of the chill compartment(s) and unfrozen compartment(s) in litres.
Airborne acoustical noise emissions and class. In this case this is a B class.

How are the flight emissions labels displayed?

Data from the Flight Emissions Label will be available on an increasing number of platforms - from airline booking websites to online travel agents. Information such as carbon footprint is becoming the norm in the air transport industry customer experience.

Integrating the Flight Emissions Label provides an additional service - that of estimating impacts - which is increasingly considered and expected by the passengers in Europe. It is meant to lend additional credibility to the parties displaying it and above all, enable them to support and reward the decarbonisation efforts of the European airline industry.

The Label will provide standardised information on the carbon footprint of flights in the EU.

The Label information will be publically available in a machine-readable format. Stay informed via the data integrators newsletter.