The A-Z: Statistics
There is a wealth of statistics on aviation (although not as much as one would like on its environmental impacts).
1. Passengers at UK airports
One of the most useful and important statistics is the number of passengers at UK airports. At the end of 2008 (the last year for which full statistics are available) there were 244 million passenger trips. The largest airports are:
| Airport | Pasengers | % of UK total |
| Heathrow | 66.9 | 31.5 |
| Gatwick | 34.2 | 16.1 |
| Stansted | 22.3 | 10.5 |
| Manchester | 21.1 | 9.9 |
| Luton | 10.2 | 4.8 |
| Birmingham | 9.6 | 4.5 |
| Edinburgh | 9.0 | 3.7 |
| Glasgow | 8.1 | 3.6 |
Data from Transport Statistics Great Britain 2009, Table 2.9
(Pie chart pending)
2. Aviation v road emissions
Responding to campaigns, some aviation lobbyists have said that instead of demonising air travel, we should be addressing emissions from cars/road transport, as the latter produces far more emissions. To help people judge for themselves, here some statistics.
| 1990 | 2007 | Growth 1990 to 2007 |
Annual growth | |
| Road % of UK total |
17.5% | 20.8% | + 11% | + 0.6% |
| Air % of UK total |
3.6% | 7.6% | + 83 % | + 3.6% |
It can be seen that at present, road traffic produces almost 3 times as much CO2 as aircraft. But the figures show that aviation emissions are growing very rapidly (3.6% pa) – far faster than road emissions (0.6% pa). Also, aviation’s climate impacts are not confined to CO2. To allow for other gases, the government applies a factor of 1.9 to CO2 emissions
If these two factors are taken into account, a rather different picture emerges. If the present growth rates continue, aviation’s impacts will exceed road traffic’s in under 20 years.
More information on road and aviation emissions.
3. Air freight
For various statistics on air freight see air freight report .
4. CO2 emissions from aviation in the EU
The UK produces considerably more CO2 from aviation than any other european country. The table below shows estimated emssions for 2009 in millions of tonnes and the per capitata emissions for the 6 biggest emitters.
| Country | CO2 (million tonnes) | CO2 per capita |
| UK | 60.3 (note) | .98 |
| Germany | 41.9 | .51 |
| France | 30.9 | .48 |
| Spain | 27.1 | .59 |
| Italy | 17.7 | .29 |
| Netherlands | 17.1 | 1.07 |
| Total EU | 235.7 |
These emission figures by country are taken from a quarterly publication European Emissions Report by RDC Aviation. The report gives more information by country and emissions by airline.
Note. The RDC figure for the UK is much higher than the government’s figure. This is due to RDS attributing to the UK all emissions from flights to or from the UK, whereas the government apportions approximately half to the UK and half to the distant country. There is no reason to suppose that this alters the relative per capita emissions that are indicated by the table.
Only CO2 figures are given. Emissions of the other major greenhouse gases – H2O and NOx – are not covered by the report and nor are emissions of toxic gases.
5. CO2 emissions from aviation in the UK
Figures published by the government show that emssions from aviation in 2008 were 36.3 millions tonnes. These represent 6.3% of all UK emissions. It should be noted that this % only refers to CO2 – taking acount of all greenhouse gases, the figure is about 11%.) See article in our climate change emissions section.
More statistics …
Over the coming months we will be adding more statistics to this page. There are also statistics within the A-Z subject pages.