The Environmental Challenge in Aviation: Can Airport Charges Be Part of the Solution?

Xavier Fageda and Ricardo Flores-Fillol

Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 2025, vol. 12, issue 4, 943 - 982

Abstract: Aviation is becoming a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and generates local pollution with harmful health effects. This study examines the effects of airport charges by means of a theoretical setup and an empirical application. The equilibrium analysis identifies how airport charges affect fares, frequencies, and aircraft emissions. The welfare analysis concludes that frequencies are excessive when the damage caused by emissions is severe. Finally, our model explores mechanisms for revenue-neutral airports to compensate rises in emission charges by lowering nonemission charges to generate incentives for airlines to renew their fleets. The empirical analysis concludes that NOx emission charges have a modest effect on fares and frequencies as compared to per-passenger and per-flight charges. Although only emission charges spur the use of newer aircraft, they should be much higher than their actual values to play a relevant role in contributing to a more sustainable aviation.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/732803 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/732803 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jaerec:doi:10.1086/732803

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().