As many in the European aviation industry are learning to their cost, the environmental debate can have a lot more to do with politics and public sympathy than it does with technology.
The new emissions surcharge scheme at Zürich Airport, now being challenged by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), is a case in point. In the name of cutting pollution for local residents, the Zürich authorities are adding up to 40%on top of landing fees for those aircraft deemed to be the worst culprits in producing emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx)and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Naturally, the people of Zürich have a perfect right to be protected from pollution. What is at issue whether the surcharges are an appropriate or even effective way of achieving that end.
The evidence, so far, suggests that it is not. The way that the emissions are calculated is itself suspect. Nox and VOCs figures have been taken wholesale from engine certification standards, never designed for use as airport environmental measures, and simply lumped together.
Turboprops, for which figures are not available, have been given an arbitrary 10% surcharge. Compare and contrast with similar pending legislation in Sweden, which makes such aircraft best of class.
Similar criticisms could be levelled against the complex noise regime at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, which came perilously close to causing chaos at the airport during the final months of this year (finally avoided through a swift Dutch Government decision)and is still going to curtail growth in movements in 1998. Again, there was no clear evidence that academic breaches in the noise "contours" drawn up around Schiphol have had any impact on local residents. In fact, the wider picture shows that Schiphol had actually abated noise levels for a good slice of the neighbouring residential areas.
The nagging concern in these cases and others is that ad hoc decisions are being taken by political authorities keen to be seen to be helping the environment, but which are ill-informed (or unconcerned) about the wider implications of their decisions, economic or otherwise.
Airlines are understandably reluctant to shout too loud against environmental campaigns for fear of being cast in the role of big-business interests standing in the way of saving the planet. IATA has laudably found a role on some of the burden with its legal challenges. Yet legal challenges on their own are not the answer. That lies in winning public confidence.
Aviation could do worse than bear in mind some of the lessons already learned from other industries, such as petro-chemicals or automotive, which have suffered from the environmental movement. In many cases, their first natural response was to come out fighting with arguments based on hard science and economics. It was a battle that was hard to win against the more popular, intuitive arguments in favour of cleaning up the environment.
The better response has been to engage in a more open debate, laying out what can be done, as well as educating the public as to what cannot. The most successful strategy has been in steering the debate towards a more measured look at global "life cycle" costs and away from knee-jerk reactions. A wider look at airport pollution, for example, may raise the need for tougher action on road trafÌc than aircraft. IATA already makes the point that a step change in the efficiency of Europe's air-traffic-control systems would do vastly more to cut emissions than any number of airport restrictions.
Many European airlines have already gone a good deal of the way towards such an approach, with environmental audits and recycling programmes, but more will be needed if aviation is to avoid being targeted as a high-profile polluter.
The bottom line is that the aviation industry must do more to demonstrate how it is already cleaning up its act, or otherwise risk being lumbered with increasingly irrational, and occasionally impossible, regulation.
Source: Flight International
