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 EU 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.
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.
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 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 publicly available in a machine-readable format.
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.
