Aviation and the Global Atmosphere

Aviation and the Global Atmosphere
period 1960 through 1995. No constraints were imposed on the values the parameters could
take. Further details of the modeling process appear in CAEP/4-FESG (1998). Table 9-9 lists the
GDP growth assumptions used in developing these scenarios (Leggett et al., 1992). The key
assumptions of this approach follow:
● The world can be treated as a single, gradually maturing aviation market that is the sum
of regional markets at various stages of maturity.
● Historical values of world demand and GDP over time provide sufficient information
about the stage of development of the industry to provide reliable estimates of market
maturity.
● Business and personal travel sectors can be combined.
● Global traffic growth is driven primarily by global GDP; as markets mature, overall
passenger growth rates will eventually grow in line with GDP growth.
● Fuel will be available, and fuel prices will not increase greatly relative to other costs.
● Whatever aviation technological or regulatory changes occur, they will have no significant
impact on ticket prices, demand, or service availability.
● Infrastructure will be sufficient to handle demand.
● There will be no significant impacts from other travel modes (e.g., high-speed rail) or
alternative technologies (e.g., telecommunications).
Perhaps the most critical assumption of this methodology was that historical global traffic totals
contained sufficient information about the maturity of the industry as a whole to provide a
reasonable basis upon which long-term aviation trends could be projected. There is a question of
whether the signals of recent years (i.e., that overall traffic growth is slowing) are sufficiently
robust to provide a reliable indication of future long-term growth. A related concern is that
historical world traffic totals are dominated by OECD experience, thus may not adequately
capture the potential for growth in other, less-developed regions (CAEP/4-FESG, 1998). To a
large extent, the FESG scenarios for 2050 reflect assumptions of no fundamental change in
overall revenue/cost structure trends of the aviation industry and no fundamental changes in the
trends in technology or society. They also assume that the growth of air traffic demand will not
be significantly constrained by other limiting factors. Sections 9.6.5 and 9.6.6 examine the
availability of infrastructure and fuel with regard to the plausibility of all of the long-term scenario
projections.
Growth rates from the model were applied to 1995 reported world traffic demand (Boeing, 1996)together
with GDP growth rates from the IPCC IS92a, IS92e, and IS92c scenarios-to produce
FESG base case (Fa), high (Fe), and low (Fc) scenarios of scheduled traffic demand. The high
case (Fe) was adjusted slightly to match the NASA traffic forecast for 2015 on which the NASA
2015 emission inventory was based. The basis for the NASA 2015 traffic forecasts were GDP
forecasts that were similar to the IS92e GDP scenario (Boeing, 1996). The resulting traffic
demand and average growth rate for the three 2050 scenarios are illustrated in Figures 9-16 and
9-17 and listed in Table 9-10. The traffic demand scenarios have been labeled Fa through Fe for
brevity; these labels, when combined with the appropriate technology assumption designator (1
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Figure 9-17: Average traffic growth rates from FESG
Figure 9-18: Fuel efficiency trends to 2050
corresponding to the two ICCAIA technology scenarios
for the FESG high traffic demand case.