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The Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA website: www.abta.com) has urged the airline industry to make more of an effort to cut down on fuel costs by investing in greener aircraft.

According to the trade body, individual carriers could make significant savings by replacing their aging fleets with newer planes that adhere to higher standards of fuel efficiency.

It cited the case of Ryanair, whose fuel costs have resulted in heavy losses due to its continued reliance on less modern aircraft.

ABTA spokesman Sean Tipton noted that year-on-year oil prices had more than doubled at the height of this summer’s crisis, which has a profound effect on the operating costs of airlines.

“The ones which are really being hit by this are older fleets because older planes are much less fuel efficient, so they are going to be burning more fuel and they are [more] inefficiently manned than newer fleets,” he explained.

Alluding to a raft of recent bankruptcies, including Zoom Airways, Tipton added: “In terms of airlines going out of business, they are the ones which haven’t been going for long.”

About the author

Oonagh ShielContent Manager at Cheapflights whose travel life can be best summed up as BC (before children) and PC (post children). We only travel during the school holidays so short-haul trips and staycations are our specialities!

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