Simply put, the more passengers a plane transports, the less greenhouse gases it emits for each of them. Since business and first class seats are larger, they take up more room. Travellers in business or first class are responsible for more emissions because they effectively exclude additional people from traveling on the same flight. Planetair allows you to enter whether you are flying in economy, business or first class. As different aircraft have different seating configurations, and these vary especially with flight distance, the difference between the three classes varies. For business class travelers, we apply between 1.5 and 2.9 times the emissions of an economy traveller, and for first class passengers between 1.5 and 4 times the amount.
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Airplanes release most of their CO2 and other GHGs into the atmosphere at high altitude,
where they cause more damage. As a result, the United Nations Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change in 1999 recommended multiplying aircraft emissions by a factor of 2.7 to account for their
full effect. In the meantime, the science has advanced, and more recent findings suggest that the impact might not be as high. Planetair therefore uses a factor of 2 when calculating the CO2 emissions equivalents for flights in order not to underestimate the impact of emissions at high altitude. We will continue to follow the evolution of the scientific debate and will adjust our policies accordingly.
Short-haul flights use more fuel per distance traveled
because of the relatively longer duration of the take-off and landing phases
relative to the duration at which the plane is cruising. Take-off and landing
require the engines to run at full throttle and therefore consume more fuel. In
addition, once the plane reaches a certain altitude, its drag (the force of
resistance that must be overcome to propel the plane forward) is diminished due
to the thinner air. The shorter the plane travels in thin air relative to the
total trip duration, the higher therefore the amount of fuel used per
kilometre. Planetair takes this into account in its emissions calculations.
