WORKING PAPER 2017-16 Canada-U.S. transborder airline fuel-efficiency ranking Authors: Chaoqi Liu, Anastasia Kharina Date: December 29, 2017 Keywords: Transborder, Airline fuel efficiency This study assesses and compares the on fuel efficiency decreases as stage Aviation Organization (ICAO) estab- fuel efficiency of airlines serving 10 length increases. lished two aspirational goals for inter- transborder routes between Canada national flights: improving fuel effi- and the United States for the 12 months This study corroborates that aircraft ciency by 2% annually and zero net are the most carbon-intensive means between March 2016 and February growth of aviation CO2 emissions after 2017. The fuel efficiency of nine airlines of travel compared with cars, buses, 2020 (ICAO, 2010). In March 2017, flying these routes—five based in and trains (Kwan, 2013; Rutherford ICAO formally adopted new global & Kwan, 2015) based on passenger Canada and four in the United States— aircraft CO2 emission standards which are ranked based on the Piano 5 aircraft miles per gallon of gasoline equiv- member states are expected to imple- modeling software and U.S. Bureau of alent (MPGge). The working paper ment starting in 2020. In addition, Transportation Statistics flight data. ends with a discussion of conclusions, ICAO’s Carbon Offsetting Reduction policy implications, and recommenda- Scheme for International Aviation is Among the 10 selected routes, the tions for future work. expected to come into effect around smallest gap between best and worst the same time. performance was 6% on the Montreal- New York route, and the largest was 1. INTRODUCTION Some ICAO member states established 36% on the Montreal-Miami route. On The expanding commercial air trans- their own fuel-efficiency improve- certain routes, the gap was driven by port industry affects the global climate. ment goals, including Canada, the host aircraft choice, as larger planes are According to the International Air country of ICAO headquarters. Canada generally more fuel-efficient than Transport Association (IATA), world- set a target of at least 2% annual smaller ones and turboprops are more wide revenue passenger kilometers rose improvements in fuel efficiency until fuel-efficient than jet planes of compa- 7.4% in 2015, the fastest annual growth 2020 (Government of Canada, 2015). rable size. since 2010 (IATA, 2016). According Canadian airlines’ fuel efficiency has to the International Energy Agency been improving by about 1% a year Short-distance flights in general are in terms of revenue passenger kilo- (IEA), carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions more fuel-intensive per passenger kilo- from international aviation doubled in meters per liter, similar to the rate of meter than longer ones. In this study, the past 25 years, the fastest growth improvement shown by airlines in the we found that flying about 200 km among all transportation modes (IEA, United States for domestic operations between Seattle and Vancouver is on 2017). If current trends persist, aviation (Government of Canada, 2015; Kwan & average 2.6 times as fuel-intensive per emissions will triple by 2050. Rutherford, 2014). More than 27 million passenger kilometer as flying 2,200 passengers flew between the United km between Montreal and Miami. To mitigate the rise in CO2 emissions States and Canada in 2016, account- However, the effect of stage length from aviation, the International Civil ing for about 1.9% of total international Acknowledgments: We acknowledge the assistance of our colleague Dr. Brandon Graver in the modeling and analysis, and thank Dr. Daniel Rutherford for his thorough review. This study was funded through the generous support of the Environment and Climate Change Canada. © INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON CLEAN TRANSPORTATION, 2017 WWW.THEICCT.ORG CANADA-U.S. TRANSBORDER AIRLINE FUEL-EFFICIENCY RANKING aviation passengers (ICAO, 2016). Table 1. Selected routes and corresponding airports This number is projected to double to Passengers** 56 million by 2037 (Federal Aviation Route Airports* (Thousands) Administration, 2017). Calgary-Houston YYC - IAH, HOU 431 Despite regulatory efforts to curb Calgary-San Francisco YYC - SFO 181 aviation emissions, policymakers and Montreal-Miami YUL - MIA, FLL, PBI 707 consumers often lack access to infor- Montreal-New York YUL - LGA, EWR, JFL 882 mation that would help them choose Toronto-Chicago YYZ, YTZ - ORD, MDW 1,066 less-polluting carriers and flights. To Toronto-Los Angeles YYZ - LAX 714 close this gap, the ICCT has produced Toronto-New York YYZ, YTZ - LGA, EWR, JFK 2,476 a series of airline fuel-efficiency Toronto- Orlando YYZ - MCO 683 rankings for U.S. domestic and trans- Vancouver-Los Angeles YVR - LAX, SNA 949 atlantic routes.1 Vancouver-Seattle YVR - SEA 626 In this report, we analyze and compare * Airport names corresponding to each code are presented in Appendix A the fuel efficiency of air carriers ** Within the analysis period (March 2016 – February 2017) serving 10 select routes between Canada and the United States. We 2.1 ROUTE SELECTION in the BTS database, so the fuel burn also identify contributing factors and for each flight was modeled in Piano To identify the most suitable origin- explain the gap between the best 5.2 The Ascend Fleets online database destination city pairs, we analyzed and worst performers for each route (Ascend Flightglobal Consultancy, BTS T-100 International Segments by assessing the role of technology 2017) provided additional data on the data, taking into account geographic level and operational parameters aircraft operated by each airline. coverage, scheduled traffic volume, in airline fuel efficiency. Finally, we number of airlines serving the route, We calculated the payload for each compare the fuel efficiency of aircraft and stage length. flight. Because BTS data is recorded to ground transport on shorter routes monthly, “Onboard Passengers” is the where a traveler may choose between To avoid potential bias from ranking a sum of the onboard passengers of different modes. single airport pair between two major each flight in one month. The number cities, we identified major metropolitan of passengers for each flight was then areas in Canada based on methodol- estimated by dividing the number of 2. METHODOLOGY ogy developed by Brueckner, Lee, and onboard passengers by the number This study follows the methodology Singer (2013) to cover a wider range of of departures. Each passenger is esti- competing airports in a region where of previous ICCT route-based analyses mated to weigh 100 kg, an industry- people choose to travel. Then, we listed (Zeinali et al., 2013; Kwan & Rutherford, wide standard, including their luggage. 2015). Aircraft fuel burn was computed the busiest transborder routes between based on a simple metric of pas- these Canadian cities and those in the To model fuel burn, Piano 5 requires senger kilometers per liter of jet fuel United States. Finally, we eliminated the variants of each aircraft type, such (pax-km/L). city pairs served by fewer than three as engine types, winglets, maximum airlines, and selected 10 routes under takeoff weight (MTOW), and number The scope of this study was limited the principle of maximizing the vari- of seats. The Ascend fleet database to direct transborder flights between ation of stage length and coverage provides detailed specifications for the United States and Canada using (north-south, east-west). The selected each individual aircraft possessed by publicly available data from the U.S. routes are presented in Table 1. air carriers globally. Since air carriers Bureau of Transportation Statistics often deploy many variants the same (BTS). The most recent data available 2.2 FUEL BURN MODELING aircraft type, the most common variants at the time of study was used, encom- according to Ascend were used in Piano passing a 12-month period between U.S. airlines report quarterly fuel burn by 5 modeling. At times, we found data March 2016 and February 2017. aircraft type to BTS, but no data is cur- conflicts between BTS and Ascend. For rently collected at the level of city-city 1 For more information, see http://www. pairs. Furthermore, the fuel consump- 2 For more information see http://www.lissys. theicct.org/spotlight/airline-fuel-efficiency tion of Canadian airlines is not available demon.co.uk/Piano5.html 2 INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON CLEAN TRANSPORTATION WORKING PAPER 2017-16 CANADA-U.S. TRANSBORDER AIRLINE FUEL-EFFICIENCY RANKING example, one BTS flight record contains Table 2. Key modeling variables an aircraft type that the correspond- Types Variables Sources ing airline does not operate, according to Ascend. To resolve the conflict, the Aircraft type BTS T-100 International Segments respective airline’s fleet website was Engines consulted to determine which aircraft Aircraft used Winglets Ascend Fleets; Piano 5 type to use in Piano 5. The modeling MTOW variables and sources used in this study Seats are presented in Table 2. Stage length BTS T-100 International Segments Mission performed More details on the precise fuel burn Payload BTS T-100 International Segments modeling methodology applied can be Taxi time Zeinali et al. (2013) found in reports by Zeinali et al. (2013) Fuel reserve FAA Part 121; Piano 5 Operational parameters and Kwan and Rutherford (2015). A list Flight level Piano 5 default values* of mainline carriers and their affiliates Speed Piano 5 default values along with their RPK distribution is presented in Appendix B. * Except for YVR-SEA route where a cruise flight level value of 180 (18,000 ft) was used to allow sufficient cruise time in Piano modeling. 2.3 FUEL-EFFICIENCY CALCULATIONS To compare the fuel efficiency of each route r across all operations, we calcu- lated the average of aggregated data from all flight records i, each pertain- Calgary ing to a unique airline-aircraft combi- Vancouver 12 nation, according to Equation 1: Seattle 28 Toronto Montreal Σ NP × SL i r,i r,i 29 20 pax-km/Lr = (Eq.