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Vahrenkamp, Richard

Kassel, Universität Kassel

The CO2 impact of long-haul flights.  
An analysis of the flight schedule of Frankfurt Airport 
 (Photo: Wolfgang Dirscherl 2014, licence according to Pixelio.de) 
Working paper on logistics No. 32/2024 
Richard Vahrenkamp 
Logistic Consulting Berlin 
Email: vahrenkamp2@gmx.de 
Web: www.vahrenkamp.org 
Source of the paper: doi:10.17170/kobra-2025020710895 
Status: 27 December 2024 
Data from the European Statistical Office shows that in 2019 - the year before the coronavirus crisis - 
around 80% of passengers departing from the EU chose short- and medium-haul destinations in 
Europe.1 Only around 20% of passengers choose a destination in Asia, Africa or the Americas, which 
mostly involves long-haul flights. However, this seemingly small proportion of long-haul flights 
contributes disproportionately to CO2 emissions from air travel. Various authors have recently pointed 
out the high CO2 impact of long-haul flights, which are fuelled by air tourism but only account for a 
small proportion of total flights.2  
1 https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Transport-
Verkehr/Personenverkehr/Tabellen/flugpassagiere.html 
2 Zia Wadud , Muhammad Adeel, Jillian Anable: Understanding the large role of long-distance travel in carbon 
emissions from passenger travel, in: Nature Energy, vol. 9, 2024, pp. 1129–1138. Ya-Yen Sun, Futu Faturay, 
Manfred Lenzen, Stefan Gössling, James Higham: Drivers of global tourism carbon emissions, in: Nature 
Communications, 2024, Vol. 15, 10384: pp.1–10. 
As data on the CO2 impact of long-haul flights is not available at European or global level, the 
departures from Frankfurt Airport on 6 January 2025, which could be viewed on the airport's website 
until 5 January 2025, are presented here as an example and show how the short-haul, medium-haul 
and long-haul flight destinations are represented, the frequency of departures to the individual 
destinations and how the flight kilometres (in the plan) are distributed among the individual flight 
sectors. These flight kilometres flown can be regarded as an estimate of the CO2 emissions caused, 
but are not an exact measure of these emissions, as the aircraft used differ in terms of engine 
technology and age. The flight schedule for 6 January lists a total of 471 destinations in the flight area 
under consideration. The targets were sorted according to distance and their frequency of approach 
on that day are listed in the following table in distance ranges up to 1000km, from 1000km up to 
2000km, etc. up to 10000km up to 11100km flight distance. 
Table 1: Distribution of flights at Frankfurt Airport on 6 January 2025 by distance ranges 
The flights on 6 January to the 471 destinations require a flight distance of 1.4 million km, which are 
distributed in the following table in flight ranges. 
Table 2: Distribution of sums km travelled at Frankfurt Airport on 6 January 2025 by distance ranges 
Tables 1 and 2 show that the medium-haul range up to 4000 km accounts for almost 80% of flights, 
but only contributes 40% to the total flight kilometres travelled of 1.4 million and thus an estimated 
40% to the CO2 impact of all flights. Flights of 5000 km or more contribute only 18% of the total in 
number, but 57% of flight distances. Interesting is, that the ranges 7000 up to 8000 km and 8000 up to 
9000 km with 16,27% resp. 18,62% nearly account for the same amount of travel distances as the 
Ranges flight 
distance up to km
1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10000 11100
Total of 
flights
Number of flights 102 187 72 6 9 10 21 27 28 8 1 471
Percent  
of total
21,656 39,703 15,287 1,274 1,911 2,123 4,459 5,732 5,945 1,699 0,212
Percent 
culminated
21,656 61,359 76,645 77,919 79,830 81,953 86,412 92,144 98,089 99,788 100,000
Ranges flight 
distance up to 
km
1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10000 11100
Total km 
flown
Sum of km 
travelled
79800 251533 194133 28733 47133 65248 153674 228431 261466 82867 11067 1404085
Percent  
of total
5,68 17,91 13,83 2,05 3,36 4,65 10,94 16,27 18,62 5,90 0,79
Percent 
culminated
5,68 23,60 37,42 39,47 42,83 47,47 58,42 74,69 93,31 99,21 100,00
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category 1000 up to 2000 km with 17,91%. The following figure illustrates the concentration curves of 
numbers and distances. 
Figure 1: Concentration curves for number of departures and flight distances 
 
In the following figure, the high proportion of long-haul flights in the flight kilometres covered is 
visualised as a ‘long-haul belly’. 
Figure 2: Visualisation of the long-haul belly of long-haul flights. 
 
The data from Frankfurt Airport only represents a section of global air traffic, but clearly demonstrates 
the high contribution of long-haul flights to CO2 emissions. Comparable studies on the major hub 
airports of Paris, London and Amsterdam in Europe will probably lead to similar results.  
 
The question is how politicians should react to the long-haul boom in air tourism. Various instruments 
for curbing long-haul tourism are discussed in the specialist literature, such as increased taxes on 
Seite 3
paraffin, taxes on long-haul flights, the allocation of CO2 budgets or the restriction of advertising for 
long-haul tourism or regulation on programs to collect miles. These measures also jeopardises the 
trade fair business for tourism. A restriction on long-haul flights only affects a small number of air 
travellers compared to a restriction on short and medium-haul flights and is therefore easier to 
implement politically. 
 
 
Seite 4


English

An analysis of the flight schedule of Frankfurt airport

Jörgensen, Rainer Georg

Nannipieri, Paolo

Adenylate energy charge (AEC) in soil: an almost ignored determination of soil microbial activity - in memory of Phil Brookes

University of Kassel

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