‘DELIVERIES SET TO BOOST FUEL EFFICIENCY’
Available tonne per kilometre likely to improve by US$3.7b next year, says IATA report
AIRLINE fuel efficiency in terms of capacity use per available tonne per kilometre is expected to improve by 1.5 per cent, or US$3.7 billion (RM15.46 billion), of fuel savings next year as deliveries of new aircraft grow and fuel prices rise sharply.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) chief economist Brian Pearce said continued fuel efficiency gains had partially decoupled carbon emission from expanding air transport services.
“Fuel is such a large cost that focuses intense effort in the aviation industry to improve fuel efficiency through replacing fleet with new aircraft, better operations and efforts to persuade governments to improve the airspace and airport inefficiency that waste around five per cent of fuel burn each year,” he said.
Pearce said without the expected fuel efficiency gain this year, fuel burn and carbon emission would be 1.5 per cent higher next year.
“This represents savings of over 16 million tonnes of carbon, as well as savings on fuel that would have cost the industry and its consumers an additional US$3.7 billion,” he said.
IATA expects airlines’ fuel bill to rise to US$200 billion next year, representing a 24.2 per cent of average operating cost.
He said airlines also expected to continue hiring over the next 12 months, as capacity and traffic would grow strongly, although the pace of expansion is slower than last year.
“We estimate total employment by airlines to exceed 2.9 million next year, a rise of 2.2 per cent compared with this year.
“Productivity is likely to slow a little with the average employee generating just over 530,000 ATKs a year, which is a 2.9 per cent improvement over this year,” he said.
According to the 2018 IATA year-end report, airlines and customers are forecast to generate US$136 billion in tax revenues next year.
“We forecast the value of international trade shipped by air next year to be US$7 trillion, while tourists travelling by air in 2019 to spend about US$908 billion,” it added.