The president of Emirates Airline is warning the airline industry not to make carbon-reduction promises it cannot deliver.
“People are expecting us… by the end of this decade, to take out 40% of our emissions… We are in la-la-land if you think we are going to do this,” Tim Clark said on 4 October. He made his comments in Boston on the opening day of IATA’s 2021 World Air Transport Summit. Earlier the same day, at its annual general meeting, IATA adopted a resolution calling for the airline industry to achieve “net-zero carbon emissions by 2050”. “If you create the expectation we are going to have electric A380s flying… We have to do something about that,” Clark says, adding that the industry must “bring people back to reality”. Much discussion on the event’s first day involved carbon reduction. Executives at airframers and airlines pledged their support for carbon-cutting goals, saying the world is emerging from the pandemic with renewed dedication to cleaner power. But exactly how the industry intends to achieve such change remains largely unclear. Executives laid out several potential paths – and accompanying hurdles. “Sustainable aviation fuel – that will be a step-function change in the very near term,” says Boeing Commercial Airplanes chief executive Stan Deal. Airbus chief Guillaume Faury says: “We have planes… that are already certified for burning 50% sustainable aviation fuel.” SAF accounts for a sliver of the aviation industry’s current fuel burn. IATA has set out SAF goals calling for SAF to account for 5% of the industry’s total fuel usage by 2030. Emirates’ Clark raised skepticism that sustainable fuel prices can be made economically viable, noting that the fuel can cost two or three times that of traditional fossil-based aviation gas. IATA suspects that, as SAF production increases, the sector will achieve a “tipping point”, after which costs will start declining. “The next steps are to scale the use of SAF,” says Airbus’s Faury. “We have a challenge.” Some governments are on board. A bill now working through the US Congress would provide tax credits to sustainable fuel blenders. Boeing’s Deal says he also supports a “tax credit for consumption” of SAF. Airbus’s clean-energy strategy includes development of a hydrogen-powered airliner for service entry in the mid-2030s. The airframer revealed its hydrogen-aircraft concept last year. “There are many challenges with using hydrogen,” Faury says, citing “engineering work” and the need for a hydrogen supply chain.

KLM is “in the midst” of discussing a possible narrowbody aircraft order with Airbus and Boeing. That is according to KLM chief executive Pieter Elbers, who says the airline is returning to a fleet replacement process that had been under way when the Covid-19 pandemic struck. “We’re now in the midst of the discussions with the two of them,” Elbers says when asked about narrowbodies offered by Airbus and Boeing. “We are speaking here with the suppliers.” He made his comments on 4 October in Boston during IATA’s World Air Transport Summit. Elbers notes that KLM already renewed its regional-aircraft fleet with Embraer E-Jets and its widebody fleet with 787's and 777's. Now, KLM’s focus returns to replacing 737's. KLM and affiliate Transavia operate nearly 100 737NG's, which have an average age of 12 years, according to fleets data. Some are more than 20 years old. “The focus today is first getting the replacement of the 737s,” Elbers says. “We haven’t made any decision yet.” He declines to discuss the relative merits of narrowbodies offered by Boeing and Airbus. “I’ll let the process run,” Elbers says.

American Airlines has invoked the US government's new Covid-19 vaccine requirements for federal contractors and subcontractors in its own recently disclosed requirement that all of its US-based employees and certain international crew members be vaccinated. The Fort Worth-based carrier's chief executive Doug Parker and president Robert Isom said in a memo sent to employees on 1 October that "due to several of our agreements, including the City Pair Program, the Civil Reserve Air Fleet program and our Department of Defense cargo contracts, American is classified as a government contractor." American is still working out the details of the federal government's and its own vaccine requirements. In the meantime, the carrier's stance toward its employees' vaccination status is definitive. "It is clear that team members who choose to remain unvaccinated will not be able to work at American Airlines," Parker and Isom say. US president Joe Biden on 9 September signed an executive order requiring Covid-19 vaccination for employees at all federal contractors. The White House on 24 September disclosed that federal contractor employees must be fully vaccinated no later than 8 December. Additionally, Biden disclosed on 9 September that the Department of Labor is developing an emergency rule requiring all companies and organisations with 100 or more employees ensure their workforces are fully vaccinated or show a negative test at least once a week. American previously had used various enticements to increase the vaccinated portion of its workforce. Parker and Isom say: "We have consistently advocated that all American Airlines team members… should get vaccinated, and we appreciate the tens of thousands of team members who did so during our incentive program. For those colleagues who did not, we realize this federal mandate may be difficult, but it is what is required of our company, and we will comply." United Airlines was the first US carrier to have used the threat of termination as an incentive for employees to get vaccinated. The Chicago-based carrier had disclosed to its US employees on 6 August that they would be required to receive a Covid-19 vaccine and upload their vaccination records to a company site. Separately, US senator Dianne Feinstein on 29 September introduced to the Senate a bill that would require all passengers on domestic airline flights to either be fully vaccinated, have recently tested negative for Covid-19 or have fully recovered from Covid-19. JetBlue Airways' chief executive Robin Hayes said during a 4 October media briefing at the IATA Annual General Meeting in Boston that he and others in the US aviation industry are "concerned" about the operational complexity that would be involved in the establishment of vaccination and testing requirements for domestic travellers should Feinstein's bill be signed into law. "If the [US Transportation Security Administration] were to perform this function, do they have the regulatory approval and authority to do that?" Hayes says. "There's just a lot that has to be worked through, such as managing religious and medical exemptions. The complexities that come with that type of effort in terms of the domestic landscape make it extremely challenging. It would mean people having to come to the airports earlier, it would mean longer lines, it would mean more people would be required to perform these functions. We're not sure at the moment whether the system is ready for that."