Aviation sustainability: how effective is carbon offsetting?

As scrutiny and criticism of the global aviation industry continues to grow, JetBlue Airways' recent declaration that its US domestic flights will be carbon neutral in 2020 is the latest declaration by an airline that it is taking climate change seriously.

Airlines need to continue their work to reduce their carbon footprints, including operating newer, fuel efficient aircraft, using more fuel efficient navigation techniques, and eliminating single use plastics from their operations. Airlines also need to stay at the forefront of biofuel development.

But the pledges by JetBlue and others to become carbon neutral or decrease their carbon footprints result in questions arising over accountability and costs to airlines of their environmental programmes. Those questions will rise in importance as the industry works to demonstrate its commitment to battling climate change.