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PHOENIX—The airline industry will have to review its target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050, IATA Director General Willie Walsh said.
“We are going to have to revisit it, we are not making as strong a progress on [sustainable aviation fuels] as we thought,” Walsh told delegates at the International Society of Transport Aircraft Trading (ISTAT) Americas conference in Phoenix March 3.
“There will be a re-evaluation,” Walsh said. “There will be airlines that say we cannot do this. The industry will be a bit more fragmented.” He also forecast that some airlines that committed to 2030 SAF targets “will regret it.” IATA has been advocating strongly against interim targets given the unclear ramp-up of SAF.
IATA as an industry body committed to the net zero target at its annual general meeting in Boston in 2021. At the time, it assumed that quicker progress could be made in ramping up SAF production globally with SAF contributing roughly two-thirds to the emissions reduction calculations.
Walsh lashed out at the European Union for its environmental policies. “The EU is mad in its pursuit of environmental goals because it is completely disconnected from the economic impact,” he said. He described the approach as “a model of how not to do it. Europe has been overly regulated, which has made it very uncompetitive.” He also criticized that politicians are not transparent about the cost of energy transition.
As for new aircraft programs, Walsh predicted that “there will be no major technology change between now and 2050.” In particular, he pointed out that Airbus’ plan to introduce a hydrogen-powered narrowbody by 2035 “was never going to happen. I have been dismissing hydrogen as part of the solution if 2050 is the target.”
Walsh expects U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term to be “positive for the industry” as the administration could “get rid of unnecessary and costly regulation,” an effort that could have an impact in Europe, too, if the continent did not want to fall behind further in terms of competitiveness. Walsh also believes “there will be a genuine attempt to address the [air traffic control] environment.”
As for tariffs that could impact aircraft or components, he hoped that they “would not be long term” leading to a structural cost increase. Should Russia’s war in Ukraine end soon, some limitations such as flying through Russian airspace could be “unraveled fairly quickly,” but reintegrating Russian airlines “will take a little bit of time.” If and when that process starts, “mutual recognition of standards will be important.”
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