Analytical models for CO2 emissions and travel time for short-to-medium-haul flights considering available seats

Recently, there has been much interest in measuring the environmental impact of short-to-medium-haul flights. Emissions of CO2 are usually measured to consider the environmental footprint, and CO2 calculators are available using different types of approximations. We propose analytical models calculating gate-to-gate CO2 emissions and travel time based on the flight distance and on the number of available seats. The accuracy of the numerical results were in line with other CO2 calculators, and when applying an analytical fitting, the error of interpolation was low. The models presented the advantage with respect to other calculators of being sensitive to the number of available seats, a parameter generally not explicitly considered. Its applicability was shown in two practical examples where emissions and travel time per kilometre were calculated for several European routes in a simple and efficient manner. The model enabled the identification of routes where rail would be a viable alternative both from the emissions and total travel time perspectives