Environmental Costs To Increase Prices Of Cheap Air Tickets

Global aviation faces many challenges and foremost among these is the challenge of meeting the environmental concerns related to aviation. With increasing demand for cheap air tickets and the rapid growth of the global aviation on one hand and the deepening environmental concerns on the other, the aviation industry is caught between two opposing forces. Since fuel prices and factors for improving the fuel economy are responsible to a large extent for price determination of tickets, airlines do not have commercially viable alternatives to bank upon for meeting environmental concerns. 

It has been understood that rapid technological development which encourages conservation of fuel and increases the fuel economy of airplanes is the only solution to meeting both these seemingly divergent ends. Other mechanisms such as carbon trading are also aimed at quantifying the aviation emissions, determining the best practices to minimize these emissions and even trading these by seeking to cut down these emissions from other emitting products by infusing technology.

Skeptics fear that if the technological measures to control emissions are incorporated in airlines, then the prices of the flight tickets are likely to rise. This is so because the technology is expensive. Though the running costs will increase due to higher fuel economies, the cost of manufacture and, hence, of its financing will increase, more than offsetting its gains. Further, if the alternative fuels are to be used, the question of sustainable use to a large extent will not be easy to address.

So, as of now, there does not seem to be a way ahead which could address both these issues of technological infusion and of meeting demand for cheap air tickets on a commercially viable scale.