For some, the cause is understood, the new great satan is air transport. The cause of all evil. For these, the plane has above all become the ideal culprit since the emergence of Covid-19. When the pandemic occurred in 2020, there were some who wanted to believe that, since “the skies were empty (…), the world was going to change”, as recalled in the France 5 documentary Aeronautics: The Great Turbulences.

Alas, nothing happened. At the end of successive confinements, “three years later, everything was back to the way it was before”. Maybe even worse. To the great dismay of some environmental defenders, this summer, traffic returned, or almost, to its 2019 level. In August, at Orly, it was even higher.

The author of the documentary, Charles-Antoine de Rouvre, seems to endorse the word of this fringe of environmentalists who want to drastically reduce air transport, and even impose quotas for air travel per person. On the pretext, in particular, that traveling is not essential, that “flying is not essential”. An approach that comes up against realities that are difficult to get around. In France, the aeronautics sector weighs heavily in the trade balance. It is the leading exporter. It employs, led by Airbus, more than 263,000 employees.

Desires from elsewhere

This is also a bit of the weakness of the film, which seems to forget that the center of gravity of aeronautics has moved from the West to Asia. In India and China, a middle class of several hundred million inhabitants has emerged. With desires from elsewhere, as was the case with us from the 1970s. In June, on the occasion of the Paris Air Show, the Indian company IndiGo announced an order for 500 Airbus.

On the other hand, the documentary is right when it emphasizes that, in France or in Europe, the typology of the passenger has changed. It is no longer the rich who steal, but especially the middle classes. A change driven by the rise of low-cost companies and the high prices of train tickets. In France, over the twenty years preceding Covid-19, regular airlines lost one point of market share per year to low-cost airlines, dropping from 60% to 40% of the total.

The documentary is right to question the announced implementation of new technologies to decarbonize air transport. Not before 2050, we suggest. And again, in the best of worlds. Today, the production of alternative fuels is notoriously insufficient, the hydrogen engine is far from being ready, while the electric plane will, at best, only concern short-haul destinations. At least initially.

Ultimately, it is the Swiss explorer and environmentalist Bertrand Piccard, at the initiative of the Solar Impulse project, which brings us back to an implacable reality. Air transport is only responsible for “3% of CO? emissions worldwide,” he insists. The other 97% comes from road transport, agriculture, construction or energy sectors. “We must stop making the plane a scapegoat,” urges the Swiss environmental defender.