Pioneering a Greener Future for Latin American Aviation

Transcript

Rich Maslen:Aviation has been talking about a greener future for such a long time now. You know, it's not a question of when we'll take that journey. We're making the journey now. We're taking that pathway. I guess the challenge we have in this area in Latin America is how we can still grow the industry very strongly with so much potential there. but also do it in an environmentally sustainable way. I think you 3 airlines, 3 very different airlines, may I say, here on the stage have approached this in different ways, which makes this discussion even more valuable and interesting. Avianca, you've increased capacity while significantly reducing your carbon intensity. LATAM is combining fleet renewal, operational efficiency, and SAF. While SKY has actually made a full transition to a next-generation neo fleet of aircraft. But we now question, does this work? Can airlines afford the journey that this will take to a greener future? What governments need to do to help you in this journey? And perhaps most importantly, can Latin America continue to grow while genuinely becoming a greener industry? So I think to start with, let's, let's just look at defining this. What does greener actually mean? So Keep it simple. General question: when we talk about making aviation greener in Latin America, what does that actually mean in practical terms for an airline like yours? I'm going to start with you, Felipe.

Marco Larsen:Sure.

Felipe Gómez:Thank you so much, and thank you for the invitation to be here with you today. For us, when we speak about becoming— I don't know if the term is greener because there is no such thing as a green aviation, For us, it's about efficiency and access. Avianca has changed its business model the last 5 or 6 years, and we have worked a lot to make sure that we have more passengers on our plane and that we have a more flexible service so that as many Latin Americans as possible can use the airplane as a mode of transportation and leverage the development of the region. For us, we need to be efficient. The investments that we do in order to become or in order to reduce the emissions that we produce need to be efficient. We need to make sure that we go down that path, but also we need to be cost-conscious. Because as you have already heard today, the number of Latin Americans that are using the plane as a mode of transportation is still very low. We need to make sure that more people have the right to use the plane to move around our region because that's basically the best way to move around a difficult region such as ours. The second thing is, Cost. Obviously also when we talk about being more sustainable, we need also to invest in technology. Efficiency, we need to be efficient, have a better service model so that more people can travel, and technology. We need modern planes. Modern planes are clearly a good tool for reducing emissions. Avianca is a very good example of what I'm saying because as you just said—

Rich Maslen:Yes.

Felipe Gómez:We were recognized as the number one airline in the world between 2019 and 2024 in terms that we managed to reduce emissions and then also create more seats offered to the market. We managed to reduce almost 20% of our emissions compared in that period of time. Efficiency, cost, technology.

Diego Martinez:Brilliant.

Rich Maslen:Diego, is there anything you can add to that from LATAM's perspective?

Diego Martinez:Yeah, thank you everyone for joining us and thank you for the invitation. Very similarly to what Felipe was saying, we believe that sustainability, the definition of sustainability for us means that we need to be sustainable, of course, with the environment, but at the same time with the businesses and with the communities that we are serving, that we are connecting. Aviation in Latin America is way more than just tourism. It's access to healthcare, access to education, and access to basic services that a lot of the places in our region don't have access. It's very tricky because obviously there's still a lot of room to grow, but we need to find a way on how to balance this growth with sustainability. What we have found during this journey is that One of the best ways is to align your business goals with your sustainability goals. At LATAM, what we have been doing in this aspect in the last few years is that we are looking into sustainability-linked financial instruments such as loans and bonds and different stuff. Today, we have 2 different instruments that are linked to our performance in emission intensity. So as long as we keep reducing our emissions intensity— today we are around 10 to 12% below the industry average in terms of CO2 per RTK— we hit targets and we get financial boosts in our instruments. So obviously we need to find a way on how you start managing the growth, the necessity for growth, and at the same time being sustainable with your communities, your business, and of course, with the environment.

Rich Maslen:I think we've highlighted the important role of aircraft. Marco, when we talk at it from a SKY point of view, as I said in the introduction, you're 100% neo fleet now. You've already made that biggest sustainability move along that pathway. When do you get that next 10%, the next 20% to be able to build on the foundations that you've already established there?

Marco Larsen:Thank you, Richard, and thank you, CAPA, for inviting me. Thanks to the ones that are still here in the room. The uncomfortable truth is that there is not a single decision that will allow you to reduce another 10%, just a bunch of different smaller projects. We already reduced 29% our intensity of emissions since 2019. Thanks to our fleet renewal, which was a decision that was taken roughly 10 years ago, and we were lucky enough to get those planes before the pandemic. But now we're really working on ground efficiency and making our departures, our flights more efficient, and also working with several other stakeholders in the operational side that can move our efficiency needle a little bit lower. There's a lot of complexity handling those kind of relations. Several panels talked about this before, but we have a lot of different regulations, different countries, different regulators, and it's really hard to work with all of them together so we can reduce our carbon footprint. Being the first fleet in the world that operated a 100% neo fleet was actually an advantage, but now everyone is catching up. Now we need to move forward and faster if we want to keep up with the decarbonization pathway and control our cost, especially in a scenario where—

Diego Martinez:Thank you.

Marco Larsen:We have huge oil prices, and we actually don't know when the war is going to stop. We're working towards being more efficient on the takeoff, on the cruise phase of the flight, on the descent. That will probably get us another 4%, 3% to 4% of reduction. Still a long way to become net zero, but I think that's probably our main priority now. It's working on operational efficiency and working with other stakeholders on increasing efficiency.

Rich Maslen:There's various opportunities in every part of the experience to be able to make these cuts and find savings where you can. In lots of parts of the world, SAF is still seen as one clear area where we can make a big chunk of progress. But that's when things start to get a bit challenging when we start talking about it, especially in certain parts of the world. So, Diego, from LATAM's point of view, you've been particularly vocal about SAF development as an airline in the region. What's the biggest obstacle to delivering on what you want to achieve? Is it production price, feedstock, infrastructure, government involvement, or is it simply that you don't have a large enough market here to make it work?

Diego Martinez:I think that's a very good question. One of the things that we've been advocating is for public policies based on scientific information, on academic information. I think that's one of the things that we're lacking in the region is the correct policies. To implement or to create the right policy, you really need to understand where you're sitting at. In that term, what's your feedstock? What's your market? What's the impact if you have any policy around SAF? One of the things that we found, we co-funded an independent study carried out by MIT that I would say it's one of the most in-depth analyses for decarbonization of aviation in our region. It's a very specific study that MIT carried. And one of the things that it said is that obviously, if you are going to take into account the extra cost of SAF, you're going to have an impact on connectivity, right? You're going to have an impact on demand. But if you have a regional integration of policies, you can halve that impact.

Felipe Gómez:Yeah.

Diego Martinez:Right? But in order to do so, you need to make sure that all the countries in the region create a regional SAF market. So you can have the feedstock from Brazil, for example, that has enough feedstock, but maybe not enough market. But if you take into account all the region, then you're going to have the market and you're probably going to have a cheaper SAF that you could use for different policies around the countries. So obviously there's— it's not a simple It's not going to be solved with more studies. It's not about having more studies, but it's about having the right policies in place and being very smart and understand the impacts that these policies are going to have. Definitely one of the things that we believe would be a game changer is to have a regional integration, to have policies that are integrated within the countries. But not only about SAF, but also about the carbon market itself. You have an aviation decarbonization policy for the region and not fragmented as usually happens.

Rich Maslen:How do you see that as fundamentally something that is possible given the fact that there is such a varied size of countries in the area that don't generally necessarily want to be I think the Paris Agreement opens the door.

Diego Martinez:You have Article 6.2 and 6.4, so there's an opening there. It's not an easy path forward, but I think it is possible. When you take a look at the numbers, it makes sense. It makes sense for everyone because if you expect— when you take a look at the emissions of aviation, decarbonization roadmaps, whether IATA, ICAO, or, you know, whatever aviation decarbonization roadmap, they are based on global averages, right? So what they are— the story they're telling you is that aviation in Suriname, Bolivia, Paraguay should decarbonize at the same rate as aviation in the UK, Spain, or Germany, right? So you need to really take into account the realities. and have a regional view of how Latin America can contribute to the decarbonization of aviation. It's not easy, but we believe it's the way forward.

Rich Maslen:I think the biggest issue when we look at this is still purely cost, and cost is a major factor in it. Philippe, from your point of view, will passengers actually be willing to pay the cost of using sustainable fuel. We know from experience in other parts of the world as well that when there's opportunities to offset things, everyone talks about doing it, but they won't click the box and actually do it. Do you consider people will be willing to pay a premium to fly with SAF in Latin America?

Felipe Gómez:As Diego was saying, this is a particular region. You need to understand how aviation has developed in Latin America and what In what stage of development aviation is right now. For us, it's absolutely clear that if we are going to have a bet on SAF, whatever that could mean, it needs to understand that the cost of tickets cannot go up because people in Latin America will not use airplanes if the fares go up. It's as simple as that. They don't have the resources. They need to move around other ways. For us, it's very clear that whenever a plane ticket, I don't know, its price rises for 10%, 5%, 4%, it has a direct impact on demand. What we need to understand in the region is that, of course, Latin America needs to have a role in the SAF market. That's like the first thing we understand. We have capabilities, resources that can make us a region that has a significant role in the SAF market, but we need to understand how we're going to sell that SAF for developed markets. Also, how we're going to sell that SAF to the developed airlines, the airlines that serve big markets. And also, we need to make sure that whatever bet the region makes on The type of SAF that we are going to develop is sustainable, scalable, and also that airlines around the world want to buy it. Because any investment on SAF production plants is very, very large. It's, I don't know, $700 million. And $700 million in our region is a lot of money. And sometimes governments need to— for $700 million in Colombia, probably is going to be used to open up a big tunnel that is very needed for the whole country. So if we are going to invest such money in a project to produce SAF, we need to make sure that that project serves a global market. Because Latin American airline sector is still in a different developed— stage of development compared to Europe, Asia, or the US. So my question to your— my answer to your question would be we do not think that Latin Americans are willing to pay 3 or 5 times more what they're paying for their tickets in order to pay for SAF. We don't see that happening in the short term.

Rich Maslen:I guess for Marco, from your perspective as a low-cost carrier, keeping costs as low as possible is fundamental to your business model. The fact that potentially passengers will need to pay for the higher rate of the SAF cost, it goes against what you're trying to achieve.

Marco Larsen:Yes, sure. Probably the biggest question moving through decarbonization is how much will be the abatement cost of a ton of CO2. That's something that probably governments don't talk enough. If you want to abate a ton of CO2 from the air using SAF, it will cost you anything between $250 to $1,000+ per ton. You can abate that same ton of CO2 using high-quality carbon credits by a fraction of that, maybe $25, $30. So what's the most What's the smart move? Paying $250 or paying $25, maybe preserving the Amazon forest, which is highly high in biodiversity? Maybe we should consider another types of levers before SAF in order to decarbonize our industry in South America. Cost is critical for a low-cost airline, of course. Moving forward, we should be prioritizing those initiatives that are more cost-effective than using SAF, for example. That's why we are really pushing forward on efficiency. We are working with our pilots. We currently have an adherence rate of over 90% of our pilots use SAF. single-engine taxi. They use our optimized flight systems, and in that way, something that is not as costly as SAF makes really good efficiency for our airplanes, and that allows us to keep moving passengers without emitting that much carbon into the atmosphere. Many people don't know, but flying in a A320neo today can be as efficient as driving a gasoline car if that car is occupied by less than 3 people. Planes are efficient. New technologies are efficient. Probably SAF is not the smartest way to move today here in our region.

Rich Maslen:It highlights the regional differences across the world. It's encouraging to hear about the efficiency drives that are being made and the commitment. As an industry, we do get a bad press in what we're doing without people actually realizing what's going on behind the scenes and the amazing achievements that we're making to sort of bringing the efficiency level up.

Marco Larsen:Just let me add one more thing is that we don't have the connectivity that Europe or the US have. There's no trains in South America. Most of the roads are really not in that good quality. For many communities, air travel is their only option. If you increase fares, you are reducing their opportunities to move around the continent. That kind of thing should be considered when we talk with regulators on moving really fast on SAF deployment.

Felipe Gómez:Also, listening to Marco, I think that SAF is important, but sometimes it serves as a distractor from other very key decisions that our countries need to make regarding our sector. You might see in several countries in Latin America a lot of hype around SAF. Governments manage to gather people from different sectors, industries, they talk about SAF, They produce documents. There is this very active discussion, but you don't see the same dynamics in other issues that would also benefit the sector, not just in terms of environmental efficiency, but in terms of service. The most clear example is investment in infrastructure. If you have governments in our countries investing in the right sort of infrastructures, air traffic procedures, and so on, that will generate less emissions. I think, for example, what Chile just did a couple of weeks ago to measure how many tons of CO2 were not produced thanks to certain operational efficiency decisions that they took. That's something also that our country should look into, but sometimes we don't do that and we prefer to distract ourselves with very important conversations such as SAF, but that also need to be complemented with other discussions that make us more efficient, more competitive, and cleaner.

Rich Maslen:So that brings it back nicely to Diego's comments about this regional view of being able to do things, and we've being able to collaborate as one solution for the region rather than individual nations. Regulation is a major issue across Latin America and government involvement in things as well. Is regulation still a major barrier towards achieving decarbonization? There is clearly a patchwork approach to this in terms of requirements. that differ from country to country. How do we manage to get around that? LATAM, as a pan-Latin American airline covering multiple different markets, how do you bring governments together to come up with a single policy that works, that you can then build a future together in collaboration with, and building a model that works for other airlines as well? We're not just talking about doing it for one airline, you're doing it for all. It's a common thing that we're all trying to achieve together. We're not rivals around this table here. We're working together for the same thing.

Diego Martinez:To be honest, I wish I knew the answer to that question. I think if we go back a little bit to what I mentioned in terms of the decarbonization roadmaps, we believe that SAF is going to play a major role. And that's if you want to decarbonize, it's a needed lever, right? So the issue is about— it's from our point of view, it's not about whether yes or no, but more about when and how, right? So there's a lot of what Felipe was mentioning in Santiago recently. The airport of Santiago implemented simultaneous approaching. Right? Which we didn't have before. And that's saving for LATAM around 1,000 tons of CO2 per year. And if you take into account the other operations, probably 3 or 4 times that. So I think one of the first things is that you need to create knowledge. There's a lack of knowledge from policymakers because we are a very specific industry.

Felipe Gómez:Right.

Diego Martinez:That it's sometimes looked at as a national industry, but we are an international industry, right? You need to, first of all, create knowledge for policymakers, scientific information, so it's science-based, the policies that you make. Then you have to get together all the different actors, which you have obviously us, that we constantly meet each other in different events and different—

Marco Larsen:Yes.

Diego Martinez:situations. But then having the different policymakers, you have a new SAF mandate in Brazil, and they start doing dispatch work and making some decisions that I am unsure if they are necessarily in line with international standards. So it's— I don't know, it's very, very complicated, but we do need to strive towards that. to have unified policies that make sense.

Rich Maslen:It's good to hear you're already talking amongst yourselves to build the right thing. Marco, is it hard for you as a small airline relatively to others in the region to have a voice? Because they've got stronger views, their governments are probably more supportive of activities that they want to achieve. How does a small carrier maintain that role when there's big carriers that have a louder voice?

Marco Larsen:Probably that's challenging, especially in countries where we don't operate as a hub. Probably the relation that we have with the government and policymakers in Chile and Peru is quite easier than probably approaching someone in Brazil or any other country in the region. But we do it so through ALTA, through IATA, and working in collaboration with other airlines. This year we published a really thorough study of the decarbonization roadmap in ALTA, and that took us about a year, and that work was made by all major airlines in the region, including us. Working collaborative is probably the only way to make some influence for a smaller airline like us, or merging to a bigger group. That's the other way around.

Rich Maslen:Consolidation has a value with this.

Marco Larsen:We've been taking into account because we've really made a lot of progress in the past years, reducing the intensity of emissions in 30%. It's a really big number. I think that we're probably in the 5% of most efficient airlines in the world at the moment, using whatever indicator you like, grams of CO2 per passenger per seat or of fuel. That's an achievement, but that's made by a really big crew and by a really big team. It's me who's in here talking to you, but there's the fuel efficiency managers, there's the pilots, there's the CCO, COO. There's a lot of people involved in making the airline more efficient and pushing the efficiency as far as we can. As far as I know, we are the only airline in Chile that is allowed to operate with a 3% contingency fuel.

Rich Maslen:Wow.

Marco Larsen:Every other airline must use a 5% contingency fuel, and that makes our planes lighter, so we charge less fuel, and that makes us more efficient. Even though we're a small airline, I think that we have achieved a really big success on efficiency.

Rich Maslen:Marco, you mentioned a lot about operational efficiency. Felipe, I want to come to you and look at it from Avianca's point of view. What's the one operational change that you've made as a business that's delivered a bigger environmental benefit that people outside of the business probably don't quite realize?

Felipe Gómez:As I was mentioning in the first question, Avianca underwent a huge overhaul of its model. About 6 years, 5 years ago, right after the pandemic. What we did was we added seats to our planes because we were at a disadvantage regarding other airlines. We went from 150 seats per plane to 180 seats per plane. That's on the A320s. We did that Very fast, like in a year and a half. We added capacity and we still flew the same number of planes, but at the same time, we managed to incorporate more NEOs to our fleet. That combination of actions produced a big result. As I was mentioning, between 2019 and 2024, Avianca managed to increased capacity by 18%, and at the same time we reduced emissions by 20%. That might seem logical, but to make that change was very difficult, not just in terms of the operations and the work you need to do to get that through in a year, year and a half, but also to— Try to explain the situation to your passengers that were used to a certain level of service when they boarded an Avianca plane. So, and also to our workers and so on. So that was very difficult, but the result is very clear. And also another thing that we did on top of that was trying to take weight out of the plane. So we removed screens, our seats are lighter. So it was a major overhaul in a very short period of time that helped us produce more capacity and at the same time reduce emissions. That's in a nutshell what we did in order to get those results.

Rich Maslen:Diego, from your point at LATAM, is there any key areas that might surprise people where you've made some good strong efficiency gains?

Diego Martinez:Yeah. There's a lot of opportunities in the little Right. So for example, as Marco was mentioning, there's a lot of opportunities on ground fuel. When you take a look at a lot of airports in Europe, you have renewable energies in the sleeves. But if you look at Latin America, we're not there yet. So we have to turn on the APU, and that is very, very inefficient. So there's a lot of opportunities there, and we have been working a lot on that. We We have a team dedicated for that. But yeah, we also implemented AeroShark, which is basically a film that mimics a shark skin, and we have it on our 777 fleet. With that, we're consuming 1% less fuel. There's a lot of different edge technology that we're implementing, a lot of artificial intelligence, for example, to predict the gender of the passengers on the plane so we can have the right amount of water, food, fuel, and all of that. So there's cutting-edge technologies such as AeroShark, artificial intelligence, but there's also a lot of stuff that it gets lost in the conversation because it might seem small, such as the simultaneous approximations in Santiago. But there's also a lot of space of opportunity in collaboration between governments. So when you take a look at one specific route, which is from Santiago to Punta Arenas in the extreme south, the most efficient way to make that route would be a straight line, right? So, but if you do that, you're going to pass twice through Argentina. So instead of doing that, we do it through Chile because it's cheaper. It's less efficient, but it's So there's a lot of space for collaboration between governments as well. And yeah, we have a corporate program. It's called LATAM Fuel Efficiency. It's been since 2010. There's over 100 different initiatives, most of them ongoing. Some of those are one-time that has allowed us to reach around 7% efficiency, which means basically that if we were to virtually turn off all the initiatives, we would be emitting 7% more emissions per year. This means that we've avoided around 6.5 million tons of CO2 since 2010, thanks to these initiatives. And we're talking about, you know, finding the optimal route or having in-flight calls so we can take a different route that is optimal. So there's a ton of different initiatives, and it's about progressive improvement step by step. This little by little starts adding up. Every 1% of efficiency that you get, it's a lot of avoided emissions. So we do, and it has a double benefit, right? Because The best emissions are the ones that you're not generating, right? You're saving money and you're avoiding emissions as well. It's obviously where we put most of our focus. It's on reducing emissions.

Rich Maslen:You highlighted quite clearly the 1% make a difference. That's a small number, but it's a big, big step. The more steps we take in that direction, it's got to be favorable. Now, I said at the start that The biggest probably issue in a key area here is Latin America needs its aviation industry to grow. It's not simply, you know, there has been talk in Europe, you know, it's probably not going to happen about restricting travel, restricting flying. That's not an option here. We need to grow Latin American aviation industry quite clearly. So that's a huge elephant in this room right now. So do you think aviation genuinely can become greener? while continuing to grow, or is this going to be a longer-term initiative? Now, obviously, we've already got concerns in many parts of the world that we're never going to hit net zero in 2050. I think people have opened their mind that that's looking highly unlikely now. Is that an unrealistic target anyway for Latin America, and do we need to look longer-term? Felipe, what's your view?

Felipe Gómez:Again, I wouldn't call it greener. I would call it more efficient. And what I'm sure all of us know is that an airline in Latin America needs to be very efficient, not just because of the industry itself, but operating in this part of the world is very challenging. We need to overcome a lot of obstacles that force us to be as efficient as possible. My answer would be definitely yes, we can be more efficient, but we cannot do that alone. Sometimes the expectation is that the efficiency of the industry comes just from airlines. And as Diego and Marco were saying, we need to work alongside a lot of other parties in this industry in order to become more efficient and cost-effective. So, We need better airports. We need better air traffic controllers. We need procedures that make us more efficient. For example, I was listening to Diego and also in Bogotá, which is the 2nd largest airport in the region, we also have 2 runways, but you cannot land on those runways at the same time. And there's a huge inefficiency there. And we need to sit down with governments, with airports, trying to understand how we can work together to have a better and more efficient operation. And also, when we talk about SAF, we need to understand that the solution that we are going to build for the region needs to come from different parties. Not just— the solution is not just produce SAF and airlines and passengers.

Diego Martinez:Right.

Felipe Gómez:We'll pay for it. We need to work together to come to the better solution so that we have tools such as SAF available, but also that we manage to guarantee access to the service to the people who really need it in our society. So I think the answer is yes, but we need to understand the challenge from a cost and efficiency mindset.

Rich Maslen:Diego, you got any piece to add?

Diego Martinez:Yeah, I think it's not only about possible, but it's also about it's unequivocally needed. So I would say definitely yes. It's obviously a very complex task, but I do firmly believe that that is definitely possible. If we were having this conversation Maybe 1.5 years ago, LATAM had used around, I don't know, 100,000 gallons of SAF, and today we are over 3.5 million gallons of SAF. So the first time that I was doing the numbers, the first year, the amount of SAF amounted to somewhere around 0.001% of our fuel usage. And now we're seeing numbers that make a lot more sense. Obviously, we have been working very closely with corporate customers, with cargo customers. We do have the benefit that our business model encompasses both cargo and passengers, and that makes us very efficient in terms of RTKs and CO2 per RTK. Whatever space there's in the plane, we fill it up with cargo. So we have a very good load factor. So I do think it's possible. I do see there is more advances coming on, but definitely, and I hate to sound like a broken record, but I will do it. And I think, again, regional integration and understanding the different times and the different abilities that a region has. We cannot expect the same from every country. There is a lot of potential in South America for efficiencies in terms of air traffic management, air traffic control, as Felipe was saying. There's a lot of potential collaborations between governments to make aviation even more efficient. There's a lot of high-quality carbon credits as well, but we are not being—

Marco Larsen:Yeah.

Diego Martinez:We're not taking advantage of that yet a lot of the times because of the international regulations that are in place. We need to keep working, and every small step starts adding up and adding up and adding up. I think it's about consistency and about just keep going at it with consistency.

Rich Maslen:Marco, from your side?

Marco Larsen:Well, I remain positive, even though the geopolitical context in the last few years being not so great for sustainability professionals. But I think that the technology is there. The ambition of the airlines is there. We need to work in a more collaborative way with other stakeholders.

Felipe Gómez:Yeah.

Marco Larsen:But I think the key issue here is to be really smart on how we address the decarbonization pathway. I think that is not really fair that Latin American passengers should address decarbonizing the whole industry as hard as Europeans or Americans. I mean, we fly 0.6, 0.7 flights per person. per person per year, and there's a lot of margin to grow. So I think that we should focus in those initiatives that are more cost-effective first, and probably waiting for the correct time for the deployment of SAF in a more massive and scalable way. Because every decimal or every percentage point that we can reduce through efficiency will eventually save millions of dollars to our passengers. I want to remain positive. I think we should progress in a smart way, moving and addressing what we can in the region first, and probably waiting for the correct moment to implement SAF in a larger scale.

Rich Maslen:Okay, just quickly, we're running short of time. Just quick down through you all, quick yes or no answer. This is probably something that's beyond your role and more of the senior team, but would you accept slower growth if that helped you to meet climate targets? Felipe?

Felipe Gómez:Lower growth if what?

Rich Maslen:If it enabled you to meet climate targets. If you had to slow the growth of the airline to be in line with— In Latin America?

Felipe Gómez:I think that's not possible. You need to grow in Latin America.

Rich Maslen:Diego?

Diego Martinez:No, definitely no. I do think it's, again, not an easy task, but it's possible. When you start aligning different objectives, as I mentioned at the beginning, when we have our business objectives and financial objectives tied with sustainability objectives, then you start creating Momentum, not only internally between the company, but also externally, you start gaining that momentum. It's in a region that needs aviation, and with the space to grow that there is here, I think the question is not about— the question is, how are you going to do it? Because you have to do it both sustainably, but at the same time, keep growing and get to the numbers that you see in, I don't know, in the UK, 4.5 trips per capita, in the US, 3 trips per capita. And here, as Marco was saying, we're not even 1 per capita. So definitely there is room and you just have to figure out the way to do it.

Rich Maslen:Marco, quickly.

Marco Larsen:I think that probably what we can say is that we will keep growing as efficient as we can. There's a lot of margin to grow in the region, and we should be still working really hard on making our flights more efficient, as efficient as we can. But if the regulation is too ambitious and the projections that we made in the ALTA study are right, 25% of the projected growth—

Diego Martinez:25%.

Marco Larsen:could just disappear because of the increase in fares. I think it goes hand in hand. The more ambitious the regulation, the more difficult it would be to keep growing. From our side, from SKY Airline, I think that we're committed in moving passengers as efficient as we can so we can keep fares as low as we can.

Rich Maslen:Marco, something we've learned there, newer aircraft are already making a difference. SAF remains an option, but it's still a lot to be said about it. And as an industry and as airlines, you're working really hard already to make massive efficiency gains, which, you know, has to be accepted as a great progress where we are currently. It's been a pleasure talking to you. We could have talked for a lot longer. We could run a whole event on sustainability because there's so much to talk about.

Diego Martinez:Thank you.

Rich Maslen:So much to talk about. So thank you very much. Everyone in the audience, can I have a round of applause for, for my panelists, please?

Marco Larsen:Thank you.

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