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Last month, Flightmapping caught up with Easyjet CEO Andrew Harrison, who was talking about the benefits of Easyjet’s new Ecojet proposals.

A lot of commentators have suggested that India or China might be able to offer this kind of emerging technology, even though they don’t really have any manufacturers capable of doing this just yet.  Have you considered talking to the Brazilian company Embraer, who have already made major efficiency gains through aircraft like the E195 used by Flybe?

Andy Harrison: No, they are still only building smaller planes. We are looking for a replacement in the 150+ seat market, so that we can offer a replacement for our current fleet of Airbus A319s and Boeing 737-700s.

In terms of cabin noise, is there any advantage in having rear mounted engines?

AH: Yes, they should be quieter.

Do the kind of outbursts we have heard from Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary, who refers to environmental campaigners as “nutbags”, help or hinder your cause?

AH: We never take what our Irish rivals say too seriously.

How much do you think that carbon offsetting is likely to cost the consumer?

AH: We are talking about a typical £1 to £2 on an average Easyjet flight.  This compares reasonably against our current average fare of around £40. This is also a fraction of the recent increase in air passenger duty.

If you continue to encourage emissions trading, and keep talking about the aviation industry’s need to meet its environmental obligations, do you risk shooting yourself in the foot, and putting people off from flying?

AH: No, we are just keen to see an informed debate, in which the externalities of flying are properly addressed.  We expect consumers to use this information to make intelligent discretionary decisions about their flying habits.

Do you think it is reasonable for airlines like yourselves to complain about increases in air passenger duty on the one hand, and then to take handouts from regional governments with the other?

AH: I think there are two separate arguments here - one is that aviation should cover its environmental externalities, and the other is that new flight routes do bring in tremendous economic benefits to the regions they serve. I think that both of these arguments are equally valid - so it is not really a sense of giving and taking.  However, air passenger duty is currently significantly higher than the carbon cost of flights.

Will the Easyjet eco-jet proposals result in shorter flying distances?

AH: This design is aimed at flights with a sector length of up to 2000 nautical miles – 98% of all flights operated by aircraft with 120-240 seats are below this. We would expect an extended range version for the longer routes, but this would need additional fuel tanks and fewer seats.

Airlines such as Easyjet very well funded, so this kind of new technology will be affordable to them. Isn’t this all a bit irrelevant though, if your older aircraft are just passed on to other airlines?

AH: We made it very clear that we believe that there are 700 older aircraft in Europe which need to be taken out of the skies and dismantled. There is no point in shipping them out to Africa, as that just relocates the problem. What we are calling for is a win-win situation - airlines get to invest in new, cleaner aircraft with a minimum of noise and CO2 emissions, consumers get to fly much more modern equipment, and the environmental benefits are clear to see.

Doesn’t this create a huge problem, because there are already shortages of new aircraft, and now you are effectively saying to African countries that their airlines cannot expand, because these older aircraft must be phased out?

AH: We are only saying that the very oldest aircraft need to be taken out of service.

What will happen to Easyjet’s current fleet that is due for replacement from 2015 onwards?

AH: The reason why we are asking aircraft manufacturers to take the Easyjet eco-jet proposals seriously is that we are looking ahead now to our first major fleet replacement, which is due to start in 2015. We depreciate our aircraft over 23 years, so it would not be a problem for us to scrap than after this time.

Considering that Easyjet is so desperate to display its green credentials, why did you kick up so much fuss about Virgin Trains’ recent adverts, which were trying to encourage people to swap domestic flights for the train instead?

AH: At Easyjet, we’re not against trains at all, we are just looking for a balanced and sensible debate. Many proponents of rail travel seem to assume that trains are 100% full all the time, and they’re not taking real accounts of actual occupancy levels, or of the infrastructure costs of the track and maintenance. 

Easyjet has always recognised that train travel offers significant convenience on journeys of up to three hours, and that this range is extending - perhaps now to four hours. If the train journey takes less than this time, we simply don’t fly.

Further links:

• Easyjet Ecojet press release
• Initial blog about Easyjet’s green offensive
• Flightmapping news about Easyjet

My email is still downloading as I type this - all 57MB worth. Of course, there’s the usual varieties of Monday spam, but the real offender is 11MB worth of image attachments, courtesy of Easyjet, who now need to be dubbed as the web’s most un-email savvy PR office.

I’m not sure if there is a universal guideline for email attachments - I’ve previously worked on about 1MB, but there’s certainly no need to send me images this size - especially when (a) I already have them on a zip disk they gave me at the press conference, and (b) if I do use them, they will only end up as a tiny jpeg image on a news story - no more than 400 pixels wide. If I want more, I know where to find them.

Apart from this minor breach of netiquette, I think the Easyjet Ecojet is a very interesting concept, and will be back for more comment on it later. I just hope the Easyjet PR team think before sending out large attachments next time. This kind of initiative is always going to get a very welcome reception here at Flightmapping.com, but other media outlets, especially the doomsday-predicting Independent, and officially biased BBC are a lot less tolerant!

Easyjet are set to launch a massive environmental campaign later this morning, with the airline claiming that carbon dioxide emissions can be reduced by 50% as early as 2015. 

The implication is that Easyjet’s proposals will apply to the industry as a whole, rather than to its own emissions, which are already substantially below the European average. 

Although we are assuming that they are talking about emissions per passenger carried, rather than total emissions of the industry, this is still a very significant ambition.

Flighmapping will be in attendance to find out how Easyjet plan to achieve this, but we expect that some of the following will be high on the agenda:

1. Phasing out older, less efficient aircraft — this is a very easy call for Easyjet to make, especially as many of these are run by their behemoth old school European state carrier counterparts.
2. Improvements in air traffic control paths, and more efficient runway management — again, and easy demand to make, but one which could have significant impacts, even though very few of these will be visible to the consumer.
3. Continuing investment in modern fleets, and new engine technology — again, an easy call for cash rich and fast growing budget airlines to make.
4. Maintaining high occupancy levels, and sticking to point to point route networks — again, this has always been the staple business of the low-cost carriers.

Most of the above strategies are well known within the industry, even if they might go right over the heads of your typical whingeing environmental protester. 

Last week, Flybe gave us further details of their environmental labelling scheme, a strategy that they have been working on for at least three years now.  Will Easyjet be announcing something similar, and to what extent will they embrace the concept of carbon offsetting? 

Again, this is still a minefield for the typical consumer, with Flybe having opted to contribute towards energy saving projects in schools.  I wonder if Easyjet will go for something more visible, possibly involving forestry projects, along the lines are the ones which have already been backed by the Peel airport group, who operate Liverpool, Doncaster Sheffield and Durham Tees Valley airports.

Either way, I hope that the initiative they undertake is substantial, and properly thought through.  However serious concerns over the environmental impact of aviation might be, the hysteria-fuelled media have given the green lobby total carte blanche to criticise the industry, with numerous so-called facts being doled out with scant scientific justification. 

The only substantial challenges to the status quo so far to have gained any major press attention have emanated in typical foulmouthed style from Ryanair’s CEO Michael O’Leary.  These might well have grabbed the headlines, but they have done little to move the debate forward.

No one should pretend that the airline industry can plant its green credentials overnight, and come up smelling of roses the next morning, but the big Orange can still make a substantial contribution to the debate, without having to turn the air into Ryanair’s shade of blue.