What has aviation done to curb its environmental impact?
Fuel efficiency improved by 70% between 1960 and 2000 – a better record than any other transport mode. Between 1990 and 2000 alone, it improved by 20%. Improvements of an additional 20% are projected by 2015 and 40-50% by 2050 relative to today’s aircraft. Current research programmes have goals of reducing landing and take-off NOx emissions by up to 70% over today’s regulatory standards while also improving fuel consumption by 8-10%, over the most recent production engines, by about 2010. The UK’s fleet is one of the world’s most modern, and planned replacement of older aircraft could further improve its efficiency by over 30% over the 1990-2012 period. Jet airliners entering fleet service today are typically 100 times quieter than a comparable aircraft of 30 years ago, cutting noise annoyance by around 75%. Although the number of flights at Heathrow has increased by 60% since 1974, the number of people affected by noise has reduced to one fifth of what it was.
