Frequent flier schemes, like Air Miles, seem to encourage flying, and thus aviation CO2 emissions
Date added: 8 December, 2022
Ashley Nunes, a research fellow at Harvard Law School, has looked at the impact of air miles on increasing air travel, and thus aviation carbon emissions. It is possible that trips taken using air miles account for around 10% of overall bookings. Might abolishing these schemes have a significant impact on CO2 emissions? Aviation loyalty programmes are around 40 years old. They have evolved a bit since then, so it is not merely a complementary trip that can be obtained. Today, banking air miles also no longer requires getting in the air. In fact, it is estimated that over half of them are earned through non-flying related activities, as airlines have formed lucrative partnerships with third parties such as credit card companies, car rental agencies and hotel chains. It can sometimes be hard for someone to use the air miles for the flight they want, and many are never claimed. This is called “breakage” in industry parlance, and that might be as much as 30%. Sometimes people use them to upgrade from coach class to a premium seat, and that may not have much carbon impact, if those seats would otherwise have been empty. . Tweet
Frequent flier schemes would seem to encourage flying, and thus greenhouse gas emissions.
But this relationship could be less clear-cut than it appears, argues researcher Ashley Nunes.
Compared with land transport, a plane requires a lot more energy, says Agnes Jocher, a professor at the Technical University of Munich, whose research explores sustainable future mobility. The result is a disproportionate climate impact compared to alternatives (trains and ferries, to name a few).
In a 2019 report on reducing emissions through behaviour change, Richard Carmichael, a social sciences researcher at Imperial College London, observed that flying was a “uniquely high-impact activity” and “the quickest and cheapest way for a consumer to increase their carbon footprint”.
By one estimate, trips taken using air miles account for around 10% of overall bookings. But could axing these schemes curb rising aviation emissions? Or would such a policy be fruitless – and efforts to reduce aviation be better spent elsewhere? The answer is more complicated that it might initially seem.
Aviation loyalty programmes are around 40 years old. Texas International Airlines, a now-defunct carrier, created the first one in 1979. At the time, governments were easing restrictions over which carriers could fly, where they could fly to, and when, so competition between carriers intensified. Airline execs needed new ways to boost their brand. One solution? Offer flyers something extra to secure their loyalty – an IOU that could be cashed in later.
Paying passengers would earn “miles” based on how often and how far they flew, which could then be exchanged for a complementary trip. Although these programmes have since evolved (today’s flyers are also rewarded based on how much they spend), the underlying premise remains the same.
Some climate activists suggest that it’s time to scrap these schemes. “The very last thing we should be doing is reward frequent flyers,” says Herwig Schuster, a transport campaigner for Greenpeace.
“Frequent flyer programmes are not fair to the climate and the majority of people worldwide who almost never fly. We cannot allow airlines to incentivise a lifestyle that’s destroying the planet while they receive major tax cuts and subsidies, and fill their pockets by selling more flight tickets.”
Fare-paying passengers are more valuable to carriers than freeloading flyers
And sell more flight tickets carriers do. Passengers crisscross the globe four billion times annually. Each can pick from over 22,000 routes flown by over 25,000 commercial jets that collectively account for over 42 million flights. That puts total miles travelled in the air globally in the trillions, a potential gold mine for frequent fliers often courted by carriers.
Today, banking air miles also no longer requires getting in the air. In fact, it is estimated that over half of all such miles are earned through non-flying related activities. This is because airlines have formed lucrative partnerships with third parties: credit card companies, car rental agencies and hotel chains, to name a few.
But does earning these miles make people fly more? It turns out that snapping up miles is one thing, using them, another. This disconnect may seem surprising, but “breakage” – industry parlance for miles that go unused – does occur.
North American airline trade body, Airlines for America (A4A), declined to comment on the prevalence of breakage in the industry. However, global consulting firm McKinsey has calculated that up to 30% of all air miles go unused: it estimates that over 30 trillion frequent-flier miles are currently sitting unspent in accounts (enough to give a free one-way flight to almost all of the roughly four billion passengers that fly in a year).
There are several reasons for this breakage. Sometimes miles expire. Sometimes flyers don’t have enough miles to get somewhere they really want to go. And when they do have enough miles, finding “reward space” – airline seats that can be booked using those miles – can be a challenge (more on that later).
Flying first or business class may have a far larger carbon impact than flying economy as it occupies more space on the plane, meaning more emissions per person
Likewise, when miles are used, flyers now have more choice of what types of rewards to splurge on. Rather than only locking in free travel, the sole “go-to” for travellers of yesteryear, other choices now abound. Passengers can opt for hotel nights, electronics, gift cards or even football shirts.
And then of course there’s what many travellers consider the biggest attraction: upgrades to premium cabins on an airplane. With enough miles on hand, you can move from the back of a jet to the front: from a place where cuts, squeezes and exasperation are the norm to a space where courtesy abounds, champagne flows freely and Michelin-starred meals await.
Flying first or business class, however, may have a far larger carbon impact than flying economy as it occupies more space on the plane, meaning more emissions per person. The International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) estimates that flying premium leads to emissions per passenger two to three times greater than flying in economy, depending on the type of aircraft.
In sum, though, not all miles are used, not all miles are used to fly, and when they are, they are sometimes used to make flying more comfortable (versus securing a spot onboard).
Airline execs seem content with doling out miles. But how do they feel about people redeeming them?
If each passenger cashed in on their unspent miles, carbon emissions would jump. But those trips can only be taken if miles can be redeemed without restrictions (e.g. for any flight, at any time, without any additional fees). And airline execs make sure that’s almost never the case.
The reason? Fare-paying passengers are more valuable to carriers than freeloading flyers. If an airline thinks a seat can be sold for more than the miles equivalent, it will make trading miles for that seat hard, if not impossible. Data backs up this sentiment. Over time, the share of flights paid in miles has fallen and a recent experiment from CBS News in the US found no seat availability for miles in key markets for 45 days straight.
Carmichael says he supports flights that do fly being full rather than having lots of empty seats, since it’s more efficient. But “how that is achieved fairly without stimulating demand for flying” requires more scrutiny, he says. Work is also needed to see which miles and rewards schemes incentivise extra flying, he adds.
Carmichael and others also stress the need to reduce energy-intensive activities like flying altogether. The International Energy Agency, for example, has pointed to the need to reduce demand for flying through measures such as taxes on flights, as part of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. Some campaigners and researchers have called for a policy that amounts to the very opposite of frequent flier rewards – a “frequent flier levy” whereby the more someone flies, the higher a tax they have to pay on each flight.
But could air passengers ever go along with measures to reduce flying? Lucia Reisch, a professor of behavioural economics and policy at the University of Cambridge, thinks so. “The past years have seen a general tendency of consumers to be more interested in and engage more in sustainable consumption,” she says. Alongside taxes or regulations, so-called “soft policy tools” – like simply providing people with information or nudges towards flying less – are one way to do this, she says, and “can be very successful, effective, [and] are often highly accepted”.
Frequent flier programmes might seem like an obvious target, but in reality, their contribution to aviation emissions is small compared with the emissions reductions we need.
Ashley Nunes is a research fellow at Harvard Law School.
Air miles schemes should be axed as they encourage jet-setters to take extra flights in a bid to maintain “privileged traveller status”, according to a report commissioned by the government’s climate change advisers.
An “escalating Air Miles Levy” should also be introduced to rein in the number of trips taken by frequent flyers without penalising those taking an annual holiday, with the income raised to be invested into low-carbon aviation technology.
“The norm of unlimited flying being acceptable needs to be challenged and, as a very highly polluting luxury, it is suitable to taxation,” the report read. It adds that those who pollute most “could easily afford to pay more”.
It is estimated there are hundreds of frequent flyer schemes operating worldwide and so the ban would likely affect millions of customers. “Introducing restrictions to ‘all-you-can-fly’ passes and loyalty schemes which offer air miles would remove incentives to excessive or stimulated flying,” the report states.
Another policy suggestion calls on aviation companies to advertise their emissions in an easy-to-understand manner, for example as a proportion of an average annual household’s output, so that customers could make informed decisions.
The report, by Dr Richard Carmichael of Imperial College London, goes beyond aviation policies to consider a range of other lifestyle changes the public must make to tackle the climate crisis.
These include reduce meat and diary consumption, trading cars for bikes, and swapping gas boilers at home for electric alternatives.
Surface transport accounts for the biggest proportion of a household’s carbon footprint at 34%, followed by diet (30%), home heating (21%) and aviation (12%).
Regulations should be introduced to require all schools to offer pupils at least one plant-based meal option and food packaging should display a “traffic light” system indicating its carbon footprint.
Domestic travel recommendations include dropping prices on intercity rail services to reduce demand for cars and planes, and re-opening disused rail lines.
The report also recommends VAT on the installation of insulation and low-carbon heating systems be removed.
The UK is the world’s first major economy to legally commit to becoming carbon-neutral by 2050.
