McKinsey Quarterly 2023 Number 1

Outlook

Not all planes are created equal Just like vehicles on the road, newer aircraft are more fuel efficient and getting better all the time.

- average yearly fuel efficiency gains— because of improvements of both aircraft and flight procedure—of 1 percent per year between 1970 and 2019, and they reached 1.5 percent per year between 2010 and 2019. A latest generation aircraft is about 15 to 20 percent more fuel efficient than the previous gen eration models are. More fuel-efficient engines, lighter materials, and improved aerodynamics can be expected to help this trajectory continue. Fuel efficiency programs, such as those involving reduced engine taxi, continuous descent approaches, and optimized routes, have contrib uted to making flying more efficient, and there are more opportunities in those areas for further gains. In recent years, much efficiency has been achieved by increasing seat density and the share of seats sold on a given flight. - t he aviation industry achieved

However, those improvements can’t continue forever, given the natural limit to how many seats a plane can contain or fill. Overall efficiency improvements could increase to 2 percent per year by 2030 through additional efficiency gains, including improved operations, optimized approach and departure procedures, reduced vertical-speed inefficiency, improved congestion management, and single-engine taxiing, as well as other efforts, such as retrofits and new engine and aircraft designs. If these efficiency targets are achieved, the global aircraft fleet could be around 40 percent more fuel efficient in 2050 than in 2019.

This outlook is derived from eight articles, reports, and blog posts about aviation published in the past year on McKinsey.com.

McKinsey Quarterly 2023 Number 1

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