UK: air travel carbon footprint by class 2023

First-class seats on long-haul flights had the largest carbon footprint of air travel to and from the UK in 2023, at 800 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per passenger kilometer (g CO₂e per km). Long-haul business-class seats had the second-largest carbon footprint, at 580 g CO₂e per km. Business-class and first-class seats are less closely packed together than economy class seats, and therefore represent a larger share of a flights emissions. On average, domestic flights within the UK had the largest carbon footprint per passenger kilometer, at 273 g CO₂e. By comparison, the average carbon footprint of a single passenger travelling on national rail in the UK was just 36 g CO₂e per km.

Carbon footprint of flights in the United Kingdom in 2023, by haul and class (in grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per passenger kilometer)

Characteristic	Average	Economy class	Premium economy	Business class	First class
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Release date

June 2023

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Region

United Kingdom

Survey time period

2023

Supplementary notes

* Carbon footprint of average passengers for: domestic flight = flights between UK airports; short-haul flight = international flights to/from the UK (typically to Europe) up to 3,700km distance; long-haul flights = international flights, to/from the UK (typically to non-European destinations) over 3,700km distance. International = international flights, to/from the non-UK countries.

Passenger kilometer factors are used when single passengers are travelling by means of mass transportation and report emissions on a single-person basis, not for the whole vehicle.

This statistic uses original data from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and includes copyright material licensed under © Crown, the Open Government License v3.0

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