Proposal to drop weight limit to 5,700kg will affect most of Europe's business jet fleet
European business aviation chiefs are preparing to challenge the recent shock inclusion of any aircraft with a certificated maximum take-off weight greater than 5,700kg (12,600lb) within Europe's proposed emission trading scheme.
The European Commission issued a legislative proposal late last year suggesting imposing a cap on CO2 emissions for all aircraft arriving or departing from European Union airports from 2012, while allowing aircraft operators to buy and sell pollution credits on the existing EU carbon market.
The EC proposal to drop radically that threshold to 5,700kg has outraged the European Business Aviation Association (EBAA), which now wants to team up with other aviation organisations to commission a fresh impact assessment by an independent consultant.
The EC was known to be examining whether there should be a weight threshold for any future environmental levies on aviation through its Aviation Working Group that spent six months producing an impact assessment study on what thresholds should apply. Early leaked details had suggested that that would be pegged either at 20,000kg - or 25-plus seat aircraft.
According to data compiled by Flight Acas, 1,426 business jets over the 5,700kg threshold are registered to European-headquartered companies within a European business jet fleet of 1,744 aircraft. If the threshold had been maintained at 20,000kg, only 861 business jets would be in the scheme.
The EBAA says the EC has apparently undergone a radical change of mind and that stands to affect most of European business aviation.
"The EC has revised significantly the thresholds which we believed would be set at around 20,000kg or 25-seat plus aircraft. We are very unhappy, it's a 180° turn within just a few weeks," says the EBAA.
"We don't think the EC's impact assessment was right and fails to take into account the potential impact on labour and commercial issues within business aviation."
The Committee for Environmentally Friendly Aviation, a grouping of airline bodies, within which the EBAA is represented, is understood to be seeking cross-member funding to commission an independent consultant.
Source: Flight International
