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What private jet firms tell customers about their flight emissions [1]
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Date: 2023-09
The UK private jet market has seen explosive post-pandemic growth, such that one in ten flights departing UK airports are now on private jets. A recent report by the organisation Possible, where I work, shows there were 90,256 private jet departures in the UK in 2022 – a shocking testament to the government’s failure to rein in the industry’s climate impacts.
If you are someone with enough capital to fly a private jet, you might not be thinking of the cost to the planet – but you should be, given the need to cut emissions in order to meet our 2050 climate targets.
Private jet flights produce 20 to 30 times the emissions of an ordinary flight per passenger and are a luxury very few people can afford. Yet the impact of these carbon-intensive short-haul flights seem to go over most people’s heads. That may be because private jet companies like to tout their environmentally-friendly initiatives to combat those emissions and do their part for the climate emergency.
These initiatives include alternatives to kerosene, such as sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), which are deemed to be less polluting, or their work to offset emissions by funding environmental feel-good schemes in the global south.
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The problem is that SAF is not as sustainable as you’d think – SAF has to date not been used at scale or with enough frequency to curb any emissions and lessen the overall environmental impact, while carbon offsetting has been proven to be a greenwashing tactic that isn’t being done well enough to actually offset anything.
The PR machine employed by various private jet companies is eager to deflect from this truth, but I wanted to know if I could find out what really goes on behind the scenes of the aviation industry by pretending to be their target market.
As such, it was necessary to pose as an assistant to a super-rich, jet-setter client who also voiced a particular interest in the emissions from their potential charter jet.
What I did
I set about emailing around 89 private jet companies that have recently operated in the UK. I wanted a flight for my client from London to Paris – the heaviest-trafficked private jet route in Europe. The range of prices initially quoted ranged from £4,208 to £91,148 (a typical return flight on a commercial airline is £100 to £250).
In particular, I wanted to know about each company’s carbon offsetting initiatives and their forays into SAF as methods of curbing emissions.
These are the two questions we asked:
Will your company start using electric planes at any point in the next five to ten years?
What is your company’s current approach and future plans for addressing the emissions from the flights you sell?
In its response to the question on emissions, Avcon Jet said: “If the client chooses to offset 125% then this flight is totally carbon neutral.” Meanwhile, Acropolis Aviation uses the slogan “conscience cleared for take off” on its website. This all sounds great if you decide not to take a peek under the hood.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/private-jet-firms-emissions-carbon-offsetting-possible/
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