CORSIA, SAF & Poppy Mania

Who wudda thought it? According to ICAO, the biggest crisis facing the airline industry today is not the sky-high price of fuel or the problems of actually getting it to the airports when gas pipelines are being blown up and tankers get caught in storms.

AVIATION’S BIGGEST PROBLEM is also not the increasingly critical pilot shortage, or the lack of aircraft maintenance engineers. It's also not the massive shortage of ground handling staff and check-in people which snarled up the airports.

None of the above.

If the wrangling behind the scenes of this year’s ICAO General Assembly is an indicator; the single largest crisis facing the aviation industry right now is carbon reduction. That’s right; saving the planet is the most urgent problem.

Aviation contributes less than 2% of the world's total carbon emissions yet, like a gut-shot baboon, the industry is tearing itself apart by aggressively trying to convince the world that it is the champion in carbon emissions reduction.

The world’s airlines have embraced CORSIA, the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation. The big hairy goal is to have carbon neutral growth from 2020 by forcing aircraft operators to purchase carbon credits on the carbon market.

The Scheme is voluntary until 2027 but thereafter it becomes compulsory – and expensive. It is therefore not surprising that CORSIA and its awkward step child, the drive for Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) is treated with great suspicion by African airlines.

The reasons are simple. Perhaps the least spoken about, but most insidious problem with Africa's adoption of CORSIA is that it is perceived to be a ‘First World’ problem. Western airlines are responsible for more than half of the airline industry’s carbon emissions, not the tiny African aviation industry which accounts for a minuscule 1.8% of world airline activity. Africa’s response is, “Don’t make your problems mine.”