Emissions Trading Scheme : impact on air services to a tourism based island economy

Abstract

This study investigates the likely impacts of the Emissions Trading Scheme on three different Airline services; Air Malta, British Airways and Lufthansa. Considering the EU ETS Draft 2006 and the amendment of this directive, the author investigated the number of rules each operating EU airline should follow, and presented the strategies the three airline services are aiming to implement. All this has been achieved through qualitative research analysis in the form of interviews with the executives of the airlines. A further questionnaire was conducted at the MIA where individual tourists were selected at random. The purpose of this quantitative approach was to analyse an assumption that the consumer will pay, an assumption which had been put forward by the EC. The findings outlined in this study suggest that the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is not easily accepted, but for British Airways that claims to strongly support this scheme. With the prospect of the ETS Air Malta and British Airways are now trying to find appropriate means to implement the right strategies. Therefore it is thought that passengers should contribute on a voluntary basis, which however will presumably not be enough. In the Malta context, such an issue is only communicated at the Head Office and Corporate level. The limited information on this issue especially in the field of Malta, has prompted the author to delve deeper in this subject with the hope of filling in missing information.