Consumers need accurate environmental information about flights to make informed choices

The UK’s aviation regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), recently consulted on providing environmental information to air travel consumers. The CAA requested input on a draft set of principles for airlines and companies that advertise or sell flights to follow when calculating and providing environmental information to the public.

The purpose of environmental labelling is to provide buyers with information and context on the environmental impacts of products, allowing people to compare products and make informed choices. This can help to change consumption patterns and push service providers to offer less environmentally damaging products in response to consumer demand. Labelling flights could have a positive impact: public awareness of aviation emissions has been shown to be low, but consumers have indicated that they want to receive this information. Historically, flight providers have not been compelled to share this information – it was only in 2022, in the CAA’s ‘Environmental Sustainability Strategy’ and in the Jet Zero Strategy’s ‘influencing consumers measure’ that the concept of providing consumers with the negative environmental impact was first outlined. In early 2023, the CAA followed up on these strategies with a call for evidence (see our submission here), looking at what environmental information should be provided to people when they are looking for flights. 

We strongly support accurate and easy to understand information being provided to consumers at or before the point of sale and would like to see this implemented as soon as possible. While the CAA’s consultation presented several options, our full response was written with this specific objective in mind. 

Key Messages: 

• We support the CAA taking timely and ambitious action on providing consumer information. Any policy proposals need to match the CAA’s initial ambition and must go beyond a voluntary reporting requirement for airlines.
• We placed the highest priority on the information being accountable and accurate, but implementation of all the draft principles is critical for building consumer trust.
• We see Option 4 as the only option that adheres to all of the draft principles, and contributes to the Jet Zero policy objective. The other options presented are too light touch and are not sufficiently comprehensive. 
• The CAA providing a methodology alongside the principles would ensure that airlines are accurately and consistently calculating and disclosing emissions. 
• Information on the non-CO2 impacts of flying should be provided.
• Further guidance should be given on the presentation of the information. Emissions data has to be provided with context, in a format that is both easy to understood and useful to the consumer. 

In parallel, the European Commission has been consulting on its approach to creating a Flight Emissions Label for airlines. AEF’s response to this consultation can be viewed here.

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