I mentioned recently that I have visited France. On this occasion, because of a time element, I took a flight, from my local Airport- Southampton. The Airline I used is called FlyBe, and they now claim to be one of the most enviromentally friendly airlines around. After 2 years and a £2 billion investment, in 74 new enviromentally sensitive aircraft, Flybe has become the worlds first airline to introduce an innovative ecolabelling scheme. With more people flying than ever before, whether for business, holiday or part of the jet to let boom, the flip side is that humn activity including aviation has an impact on the enviroment. The  UK governments response to talk of carbon footprints and climate change was to hit passengers in their pockets. Last year passenger duty was increased by £5-£10 ($8-$20) for shorthaul and up to £ 80 ($120) for long haul. But this does not solve the problem of the impact of air travel on the enviroment. Thats why Flybe has decided to take the initiative with measures designed to make a difference.

The ECO LABELLING SCHEME - Under the scheme which was subject to an assurance process by International Consultancy firm Deloitte, Flybe passengers booking via the internet will be provided with a detailed but user friendly breakdown of the fuel consumption, carbon emissions and noidse patterns of the aircraft type to be used on their journey. Each aircraft's eco label is broken down onto three parts.

Local Enviroment which assesses the aircraft's noise rating on an A (low) to F (high) rating and the levels of CO2 (carbon dioxide) and NOX (nitrogen oxide) emissions on a Landing and Take Off cycle basis.

Journey Environment which grades fuel consuption and CO2 emissions (kg/seat) on a range of typical European sector basis (500, 1000 and 1500 km) and also on an A (low) to F (high) grading.

Passenger Environment which contains information on minimum leg room and the number of seats.

The eco labelling scheme allows passengers to asses the enviromental impact of their journey so they can decide, on an informed basis, whether they want to carbon offset that journey.

Quoting the Flybe Inflight magazine this month,October 2007 - The new eco-label is more than an energy rating. Flybe wanted to consider the effects on passenger and local enviroments as well as theplanet and the three sectionsof the label reflect this. The local environment section is about how the areas around the airports are effected. This looks at take off and landing emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide, which can effect air quality and noise. The journey enviroment includes data for the entire flight. It shows the total fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. Every label provides a rating for the journey enviroment for three lengths of flights: domestic, such as Birmingham to Edinburgh, near EU such as Birmingham to Bergerac and short haul such as Birmingham to Milan. The passenger enviroment consists of a number of seats and the seat pitch, which is the space between seats. This is about passenger comfort level, but its also relevent because some of the data on the eco-label is given in a per passenger measure,. The same type of aircraft with different seat pitches will give a different per passenger measure. To ensure the ratings were an accurate comparison, we didn't just look at the data from Flybe aircraft. We compared the data across a large population of aircraft used across all the UK airlines, from the smallest twin-turbo prop plane to a Boeing 747-400, and across a range of routes up to long haul. When designing the eco-label we wanted to make it easy to understand, so we based it on energy labels used in household appliances. However, unlike those, we decided not to produce an overall grade. That's because one of the elements we wanted to make clear was the figure of carbon dioxide emissions so the passengers would be able to seeexactly how much they'dneed to offset, if they chose to do so.

VERIFIABLE LOW-COST CARBON OFFSET PROGRAMMES - To help passengers in carbon offsetting, Flybe Airline has appointed "PURE", the Clean Planet trust, to operate verifiable carbon-offset schemes on behalf of its passengers- the first major UK low cost airline to offer such a scheme.

PURE will operate two schemes for Flybe :

A Carbon credits based scheme, under which carbon credits will be traded on the EU Emissions Trading Scheme  ( EU ETS)

A grant scheme under which PURE will make direct contributions to a broad range of small scale carbon-reducing projects, for instance the installation of renewable energy in schools.

If you want to check your own carbon footprint, visit www.puretrust.org

CO2 Report - No Travel today, I worked from home