Sustainable Aviation – the coalition of UK airlines, airports, aerospace manufacturers and the air traffic service provider, which works to deliver cleaner, quieter, smarter flying – welcomes the publication of the Aviation Strategy Call for Evidence.

Given that the UK aviation industry currently supports close to a million jobs and over 3,000 apprenticeships, with contributions of £52 billion to UK GDP, enabling growth in UK aviation will give the industry opportunities to further increase these socio-economic benefits.

Sustainable Aviation fully appreciates that growth needs to be delivered with the minimum impact of aircraft noise disturbance and emissions that contribute to climate change and local air quality. We are committed to playing our role.

There has been considerable progress on this with reductions of 20 million tonnes of CO₂ from flights by UK airlines and 14% smaller noise sensitive areas near airports between 2005 and 2015.  This was achieved by developing and introducing cleaner, more efficient and quieter aircraft and pioneering smarter techniques in how the aircraft operate.  Sustainable Aviation has produced detailed Road-Maps showing how these and future improvements in the years to come enable UK aviation growth to be delivered whilst reducing net CO₂ emissions and with no further increase in noise.

With Government support for airspace modernisation and the commercialisation of renewable fuels the aviation sector will be able to make even faster progress towards the achievement of our environmental goals.

Chair of Sustainable Aviation, Ian Jopson, said:

“Delivering environmentally sustainable aviation growth in the UK, with the significant economic benefits that it will bring, is a challenge that our industry is ready to meet. The Government’s vision for our aviation industry brings welcome support for the aviation industry about our future growth.

“Aviation has already made good progress in decoupling growth of aviation from increases in CO₂ emissions, noise and the impact on air quality. In the last ten years, 20 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions were saved from UK airline flights – not least thanks to a record investment in 470 new, cleaner and quieter aircraft by UK airlines since 2005.

“Sustainable Aviation’s Road-Maps set out how we will meet our goals of improving aviation’s environmental performance, consistent with the global aviation industry’s target to halve CO₂ emissions by 2050 compared to 2005 while growth in aviation continues. We are on track to deliver, with the recent Global Market-Based Measure agreed by the International Civil Aviation Organisation being an additional boost.”