International crises are slowing the final stage of European air travel’s recovery from Covid-19 curbs, according to top European Commission official Henrik Hololei.
European air travel recovered quicker than most predicted, hitting 90 per cent of 2019 levels this year, he told an Aircraft Leasing Ireland (ALI) conference in Dublin on Thursday.
However, Mr Hololei, EU director general for mobility and transport, said various crises and geopolitical uncertainty were holding up full recovery.
He noted that China’s continued Covid lockdowns were one of the factors dragging on the final phase of recovery. “Once China opens up, that will make a big difference,” he said.
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Rising energy and living costs could also hit air travel and made it impossible to predict customers’ likely behaviour, he noted, adding that a clearer picture could emerge in coming weeks.
Desire to fly
Mr Hololei told ALI’s Global Aviation Sustainability Day that the summer’s strong recovery showed “the bottom line is that people still wanted to fly”.
He warned that aviation faced increasing social and political pressure to cut greenhouse gas emissions as it returned to growth following the pandemic.
Sustainable aviation fuel will be central to this over the next decade, particularly as alternatives such as green hydrogen and electric-powered flying are still a long way from full commercial development.
The EU wants European airlines to be using 2 per cent sustainable fuel by 2025 and 5 per cent by 2030. Meanwhile, EU member states recently backed the UN International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) aim of reaching net zero flying by 2050.
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Mr Hololei said that 189 countries backed the ICAO aspiration at its recent conference, with just a few, including China and Russia, opposing the aim.
The Brussels official acknowledged that reaching the 2025 and 2030 sustainable aviation fuel targets posed a huge challenge to airlines.
“But if we get to 5 per cent by 2030 then we will actually have a very solid basis for progress to 2050,” he argued.
Mr Hololei maintained that the targets would give manufacturers the confidence to invest in producing sustainable aviation fuel, as the aims helped guarantee a market for their products.
European airlines will have to pay for emissions trading certs from 2027, giving an extra incentive to cut carbon.
Air traffic control
The EU itself is also taking steps to boost aviation’s sustainability, according to Mr Hololei. These include continuing to work towards a single European sky, which would remove difficulties posed by different air traffic control authorities in each member state.
Most calculations show that the resulting shorter flights would cut emissions by 10 per cent, Mr Hololei said. However, he agreed that there was no easy way of achieving the single European sky, which has been under discussion for two decades.
Mr Hololei declared that restoring its climate credibility was the “most important thing” for the air travel industry.
“It has to show that it is serious about the challenge and that it’s also going to bring about the changes needed,” he told the ALI conference.
