Many travelers say they are willing to pay more for cleaner air travel. However, only a small proportion voluntarily offset their CO2 emissions. On the one hand, the climate crisis; on the other, a dizzying relaunch of the air sector after the pandemic, to the point of approaching the 2019 record this year, according to projections by the International Air Transport Association (Iata) that meets until this Tuesday in Istanbul.
At the crossroads of these two trends, the behavior of individual consumers which, despite the hype around “shaming to steal”, is still only marginally evolving, and still only in certain regions of the world such as Europe. However, awareness is real, insists Diane Strauss, director of the NGO Transport & Environment (T&E) for France.
More than 15% of travelers willing to pay more for their ticket
Since planes generate CO2 by burning kerosene, companies resort to “offsetting”, for example, by planting trees. This is now their main method of reducing their carbon footprint, but it is controversial because it lacks a harmonized method and is subject to fraud by intermediaries. In France, the Climate Law requires domestic flight operators to offset 70% of their emissions themselves this year before all in 2024. Air France has already been doing this since 2020.
In a May study by the Pégase Chair at the Montpellier Business School, only 12% of respondents said they felt “ashamed” to fly, but 41% said they tried to use it less to preserve the environment. And from the same source, respondents were willing on average “to pay 15.6% more for their ticket to fly with an airline that uses green innovations” such as sustainable fuel (SAF).
But while many companies already offer, at the end of the online ticketing process, to offset your flight or finance the purchase of SAF, very few individual customers take action, starting with the 1% order, carriers agree. And this phenomenon is not new, testified the Fnam Jean-François Rial, general director of Voyageurs du Monde.
An additional fee considered loss
Companies claim to play the game by acquiring SAFs and buying carbon credits, mainly in forest protection projects. But in the absence of standards, the presentation of this choice on company websites “is often not well organized,” believes McKinsey’s Nina Wittkamp, evoking “a relatively complex decision that will be made at the end of a long Easy deal”.
“Passengers don’t necessarily see the impact and can’t directly associate it with their flight,” adds Pegasus Chair director Paul Chiambaretto. He also evokes a theme of “marketing psychology,” tied to the way companies present this input.
According to Bain & Company’s work, of a set of people who express an intention to pay to compensate for their theft, six to seven times fewer take action, reveals Geoffrey Weston.
However, the landscape is changing thanks to companies concerned about their environmental record. Lufthansa has implemented higher “green fees”, including carbon offsetting, and “many companies are more interested in buying SAF for employee travel,” says Annette Mann, chief executive of Austrian Airlines, a member of the German airline group.
Source: BFM TV
