Dr. Fang Liu, the Secretary General of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has said that COVID-19 is affecting many aspects of how people live and work, and that she did expect these impacts to persist and comprise what is regularly being referred to as a ‘new normal’ post-pandemic.
In addition to the obvious likely impacts of increasingly virtual business practices on pre-pandemic business travel habits, Dr. Liu also highlighted the evolving consumer demand toward especially low emission travel options, and higher passenger expectations for a more health-protective travel experience.
“Travel consumers will want their long-term passenger experience to be tailored to defend better against infectious disease transmission, inclusive of contactless travel booking and boarding solutions, new types of combined health and security screening, and better-outfitted aircraft cabins,” she indicated.
The ICAO Secretary General also commented that all of these evolutions would rely heavily on sectoral innovation and digitalization, pointing out the advanced digital solutions for multimodal data and document exchange that are already beginning to significantly increase operational air cargo efficiencies to facilitate trade.
Dr. Liu reassured the participants that based on what has been the case at ICAO in recent years, “governments are prioritizing innovation today, and that not only pertains to their plans for the future but also to their longstanding preference for establishing performance-based standards for air transport.”
She added that the same applies to sustainability prioritization, and acknowledged that States have been pursuing a multi-faceted environmental work programme through ICAO for years now and are only becoming more aggressive with their agreed sustainability and emissions targets.
Dr. Liu further underscored the work being carried out globally to innovate advanced and novel aircraft and propulsion technologies, operational improvements both in the air and on the ground, and opportunities for scaling up sustainable aviation fuels.
She noted that SAFs were already a reality, with over 330,000 commercial flights using mostly bio-based drop-in aviation fuels, and that the main priority on SAFs today is to scale up production levels, reduce costs, and increase competitiveness with conventional jet fuels.
Dr. Liu also emphasized that the ICAO Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) currently allows airlines to claim the CO2 benefits of Sustainable Aviation fuels when specific sustainability criteria are met, representing the first global policy and agreement for incentivizing the use of sustainable fuels.