SAS is facing a precipitous decline in air travel in Sweden, where environmental concerns have bred the phenomenon of flight shaming. It could be a preview for airlines elsewhere in the world.
took 15 days to cross the Atlantic by sailboat to berate world leaders at last Monday’s U.N. Climate Summit. Two days later, Rickard Gustafson, the CEO of Scandinavian Airlines , arrived in New York after a nine-hour flight from their mutual home of Stockholm.
There have been ominous developments among the most lucrative of its frequent flyers: Some of Sweden’s biggest businesses have been cutting back on air travel. Swedbankits workers to travel by train, and last year it banned flying for one week a month, while employees of the telecom company Telia are required to take the train for trips shorter than 500 kilometers .
Gustafson is trying to lead from the front with an aggressive slate of actions to lower SAS’ carbon dioxide emissions, aiming for a 25% reduction by 2030 over 2005 levels. The airline is reducing weight and fuel burn by swapping in lighter seats, asking customers to pre-order food and drink so flights carry no more than they need, and it’s stopped carrying tax-free shopping goods. Pilots are instructed to taxi using just one engine and slow down en route when practical to save fuel.
Perhaps most ambitiously, he has set a goal for all domestic SAS flights to be powered exclusively by biofuels by 2030. It’s an expensive proposition. Biofuel currently costs two to three times as much as jet fuel, and many in the energy industry are skeptical that there are enough practical feedstocks to produce it in large volumes. Analysts at the Norwegian bank DNB estimate that a 1% change in SAS’ aviation fuel costs has a 3% negative impact on its earnings before interest and taxes.
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