The Future of Travel column is a monthly series exploring the innovations and bold ideas moving travel forward.
Do 'Green' Airfares Really Make an Environmental Impact?
26.07.2023 - 15:09 / cntraveler.com
Sweeping investments in alternative-fuel technology; slashing plastic waste; making crew uniforms from recycled marine detritus: These are just a few of the steps airlines have taken in recent years to help minimize their environmental footprint in the face of a worsening climate crisis. But so-called “green airfares”—a dedicated fare class aimed at reducing carbon impacts—are the latest attempt at greening the industry.
In February, Lufthansa Group (which owns Lufthansa, SWISS, and Brussels Airlines, among others) began offering Green Fares, which build carbon reduction and offsetting measures directly into the ticket price. According to the airline, the cost typically falls between that of Economy Classic and Economy Flex fares (though a search for flights from Berlin to Paris later this month showed a $30 difference between Classic and Green fares, which were priced identically to Flex fares). Specifically, they’re meant to offset 100 percent of the CO2 emissions associated with the flight booked; 20 percent of that offset is devoted to funding the airline group’s sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) use, with the remaining 80 percent contributing to various “climate protection projects,” like supporting biogas development in rural Nepal and forest management efforts in Europe.
First tested last year on flights from select Scandinavian countries, they’re now available throughout Europe and in select North African destinations like Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, across economy and business class. The fares, which the airline has billed as the first ones dedicated wholly to sustainable travel, saw 200,000 purchases in their first 100 days on the market.
Scandinavian airline SAS followed suit in April with their own Bio fares. The premium-priced tickets, which are currently available for flights within Europe (with plans to extend to more international flights in 2024), factor in the equivalent use of approximately 50 percent SAF for the route flown—though the airline has up to a year to make the actual SAF purchase. This follows a 2019 measure that allows customers on all flights the chance to pay an optional fee to support SAF use, starting from $10 per 20-minute flight block.
Increasingly, major airlines, including United Airlines, JetBlue, British Airways, and Air France, are adopting the use of these supplementary fees, which eco-minded passengers can opt to tack on to standard ticket prices in support of SAF usage and development. SAF, which is derived from various waste- and plant-based products like fats, greases, oils, and corn grain, can curb carbon emissions on flights by as much as 80 percent and is heralded as the centerpiece of the aviation industry’s broader decarbonization goals to reach
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