CAN AIR TRAVEL EVER REALLY BE SUSTAINABLE?

A raft of new technologies promise to make jetting off on holiday less damaging to our planet, but what difference will they really make, and should we all be ditching the departure lounge for the railway station and the bus depot?

- PAUL MERRILL 

ANY ATHLETE AT the Brisbane Olympics in 2032 who sleeps through their alarm and realises with growing panic they’ve only minutes to navigate the city’s rush hour to get to their event may not be in quite as much strife as they fear.

Just a few moments away from the Olympic Village there could well be a helipad-like area where a small electric aircraft will be waiting to rush the athletes to the track in time for the starter’s gun. And it won’t have a pilot.

Four-seater driverless air taxis will take off and land vertically and are the brainchild of the powerful South East Queensland Council of Mayors, which is already negotiating the purchase of the taxis from a US manufacturer.

By then, the Northern Territory Air Services will be ferrying tourists between Darwin and Uluru using 20 battery-powered, nine-seater charter planes and Sydney Seaplanes passengers will be silently whisked over the shimmering harbour by the nation’s first fully electric fleet.

“We believe there will be a revolution in aviation, and we want to be at the forefront,” Sydney Seaplanes CEO Aaron Shaw declares on the company’s website.

Some 15 years after the first Tesla reached these shores, airlines are finally waking up to the need to usher in a new era of environmentally friendly travel, with biofuels, energy-efficient planes, huge carbon-offsetting projects, electrification and even the tantalising prospect of hydrogen engines.

All the major carriers are spruiking their existing green credentials and making ever more ambitious commitments to strive for eventual carbon neutrality.

But just how much actual progress has been made so far? And can air travel ever become a truly sustainable way to travel, even with all the shiny new innovations?