For the past two weeks, the subject of the environmental impact of private aviation has been attracting everyone's attention. And if this debate, revived by Julien Bayou and his proposal to "ban private jets", has always been a climate issue, are you aware of its impacts on our planet and their orders of magnitude?
The air transport sector has long been a battleground for the ecological transition. Particularly criticized for its heavy impact on the climate, air transport as a whole accounts for 2% of global GHG emissions, according to the WRI. Business aviation is responsible for 8% of this traffic, according to GAMA.
According to a May 2021 report by the NGO Transport & Environment (T&E), GHG emissions from the use of private jets rose by 31% between 2005 and 2019. This trend was not halted by the health crisis of 2020, for while the entire aviation sector suffered during this period, it was private aviation activity that rebounded the most. After a decline of 70% and 90% respectively for private and commercial aviation, at the worst of the crisis, compared with the number of flights in 2019, only private aviation managed to exceed its pre-Covid level. In May 2022, the number of private jet flights is 20% higher than the 2019 benchmark, while commercial aviation is struggling to recover its performance (-20% on 2019).
In 2019, one in ten flights from France was by private jet, half of which covered less than 500km. But shortening distances flown is not the only problem.
In fact, a private jet has a much smaller capacity than an airliner. The 5 most popular jet models have an average of 7.4 seats. By comparison, an A320 has a capacity of 150 seats. According to T&E, jets even fly with an average of just 4.7 passengers.
Although no official statistics exist, some jet rental companies estimate that around 40% of flights are empty. So, in the case of a one-way trip, the aircraft used may have to fly to another airport for another mission. While this practice helps private aviation to offer great flexibility, it also represents fuel consumed without passengers.
And to answer the question originally posed, an airliner emits 90% less GHG than a jet (in terms of carbon impact per passenger).
The train also emits 99.8% less GHGs. The Paris-Nice journey is very different depending on the means of transport. By train, only 3.5kgCO2e are emitted per passenger, rising to 86kgCO2e for a passenger on an airliner.
In private jets, the carbon impact per passenger increases drastically due to the low number of passengers. A Paris-Nice trip by private jet, for example, results in the emission of almost 2 tonnes of CO2e (1.8tCO2e) per passenger, i.e. as much as the theoretical carbon budget to be respected in 2050 for each individual if we are to achieve carbon neutrality.