Flight Shaming Will Return In 2023

Flight shaming, the idea of of making people uncomfortable to continue flying, took off in Europe at the end of the last decade. If you reviewed the major European airline presentations from 2018 and 2019, all spent significant time talking about sustainability and pathways to “net neutral.” While the push for more sustainability was quickly adopted by the U.S. airlines, the concept of social flight-shaming didn’t catch on before the pandemic hit.

Once the pandemic hit, flight-shaming largely stopped largely because people stopped flying. At least one report in 2020 mentioned that all the efforts to get people to fly less often amounted to almost nothing, but within 30 days people stopped flying, even if not to be more sustainable. But with air travel demand soaring, expect the flight shaming to return with a vengeance:

Easy Target

To those who want to aggressively fight climate change, airlines present a very easy target. Huge machines, burning a lot of fossil fuels, and on trips that many see as unnecessary or spurious. Yet, worldwide airlines produce from 2.5% to 3.0% of all carbon emissions. While this is relevant, it is far less than many other industries and less than personal automobiles. But the availability bias explains this.

The availability bias says that we all naturally over weight information that is recent or easily available. The carbon emissions from any one automobile is very small, even though the sum is great. But it’s not as obvious as a Boeing 787 loudly taking off. And, many more airline trips are thought by some to be replaceable, but cars are used to get people to and from work, to get groceries, kids to school, and all kinds of important things. It’s easy to look at the airline industry and tell the wolrd “just fly less often.”

Not Cool To Be A Road Warrior Any More

Ten years ago, if you described yourself as a road warrior, most people would be envious. They would think of you as a world traveler with a lot of opportunity. Today, that same behavior is likely to be seen with avaricious scorn. Can’t you use Zoom once in a while? Did it make sense to take two days for a two hour meeting? Don’t you think of the resources you are wasting?

This isn’t all bad, as many times these criticisms are valid. Yet, there are many other behaviors of the same individuals that could be be targeted for more sustainable activity. Dr. Joe Leader, the CEO of the Airline Passenger Experience Association, posted a summary of over 100 trips he took in 2022. The first comment was “Any comments on your carbon footprint for this – did you buy any offsets ?”

ESG Targets Contribute

This idea generalizes to the increased focus of many investors on non-financial Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) metrics. Choosing to fly less often, as many companies have committed, is an easy way to look good on a reportable and actionable plan to support world sustainability. It may not be nearly as effective as other initiatives the company could take, like allowing more to work from home and eliminating many miles of commutes. But it is easy to announce and enforce and doesn’t change much of what the company really does.

Along with this, there is increasing displeasure with using offsets as an ESG strategy. Buying an offset while not changing behaviors is not seen as a long-term viable way to truly become more sustainable. This is laudable, and again flying less is a real, definable strategy that companies can easy adopt.

Airlines Are Stepping Up

While companies are choosing to fly less to be more sustainable, airlines are working hard to become even more so in their core operations. The U.S.airlines have a 2050 target to be net-neutral, and both Boeing and Airbus have laid out plans that incorporate newer technologies. sustainable fuel sources, and eventually hydrogen power to separate from fossil fuels.

With airlines producing about 3% of world emissions, this suggests that number will reduce even further. Will the world buy electric vehicles and produce electricity only with sustainable options happen sooner than the airlines being even more efficient? Not likely.

There Likely Are Better Targets

Focusing on less airline travel as a sustainability initiative makes sense, but as a unique or limited effort it is foolhardy. There are many other things that businesses and individuals to make more of an impact, but these are mostly all more work and infringe on our quality life the way we see it today.

To really address our climate, we need two key things: engage the whole world, as the U.S. could add no emissions but that would only slightly change the bad trends. Second, we need to focus efforts on the things that make the biggest impacts. Using these two standards, airlines are a fine but minor impact to a solution. Despite this, expect the flight-shaming language to increase in volume and airlines to fight this with their own initiatives.