BRUSSELS, Jan 5 — Good news for the planet: carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere were halved last year in European aviation. The main reason for the drop was a drastically reduced number of flights last year, due to the ongoing pandemic which spurred countries to close borders and led to fewer travellers packing their bags and taking to the skies.
In 2021, 6.2 million flights were operated in European airspace. Compared to 2019, which is the year of reference as 2020 was greatly affected by pandemic measures, air traffic has fallen by 45.3 per cent.
The best score was achieved in Finland, with a drop in emissions of 68.3 per cent. These figures were calculated by Eurocontrol, a European organisation that works for the safety of air travel within the Union’s airspace. In Sweden, as well as in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic, the reduction in air traffic made it possible to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by over 60 per cent.
Long-haul flights, that is, those that travelled more than 1,500 km, were responsible for almost three quarters of CO2 emissions: 74.9 per cent to be precise. However, they represented only 28.5 per cent of the flights. To give you an idea, very short-haul flights, traveling less than 500 km, generated only 4.1 per cent of European air travel’s CO2 emissions. — ETX Studio
