For much of aviation’s history, carbon emissions reporting sat on the periphery of airline operations—handled through estimates, averages, and generic modelling that bore little resemblance to the realities of daily flying. That era is drawing to a close. Across the globe, emissions data is becoming a regulatory, financial, and commercial issue, and African aviation is no exception.
Against this backdrop, a new partnership between the Airlines Association of Southern Africa (AASA) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) marks a significant shift. By encouraging African airlines to adopt IATA’s CO₂ Connect emissions calculator, AASA is signalling that the future of emissions reporting on the continent will be built on operational evidence rather than assumptions.
This is not about slogans or signalling. It is about data integrity, regulatory readiness, and ensuring that African airlines retain control over how their environmental performance is measured and represented.
From Generic Models to Operational Reality
Historically, most emissions calculators relied on broad averages, aircraft type assumptions, standard load factors, and generic fuel burn models. While adequate for high-level estimates, such tools often failed to reflect the operational realities of specific airlines, routes, and fleets. For carriers operating in Africa’s diverse and challenging operating environments, these discrepancies can be significant.
IATA CO₂ Connect represents a material departure from this approach. Rather than estimating emissions from the outside, the tool is built on real operational data directly provided by airlines themselves, including aircraft-specific fuel consumption. That data is then processed using a globally standardised methodology aligned with ISO 14083, the emerging benchmark for emissions reporting across transport and logistics.
The result is not just greater accuracy, but greater credibility. Emissions figures generated from airline-verified data are inherently more defensible than third-party estimates—particularly when those figures are scrutinised by regulators, tax authorities, or corporate customers.
Carbon Tax Exposure Is No Longer Theoretical
Nowhere is this more evident than in South Africa, where domestic aviation is already subject to a carbon tax. In such environments, emissions data is no longer an abstract sustainability metric; it has direct cost implications.
“In markets where a carbon tax applies, inaccurate emissions reporting can translate directly into financial exposure,” AASA Chief Executive Officer Aaron Munetsi has noted. “Using verified operational data removes the risk of airlines being penalised on the basis of assumptions rather than evidence.”
As carbon pricing mechanisms expand, whether through taxes, emissions trading schemes, or reporting obligations, airlines without robust data risk paying more than their fair share, or facing disputes they are ill-equipped to contest. Accurate emissions accounting becomes not just a compliance requirement, but a form of financial risk management.
Regulation Is Coming, With or Without Airline Input
Even in jurisdictions where formal carbon regulation remains limited, the direction of travel is clear. Governments, regional blocs, and international bodies are converging on common frameworks for emissions reporting. The question for African aviation is not whether this will happen, but whether airlines will help shape how it happens.
Tools like CO₂ Connect allow airlines to engage from a position of technical credibility. By contributing their own data, carriers reduce the risk of having emissions profiles imposed on them by external models that may not reflect African operational realities, such as shorter stage lengths, older infrastructure, or climate-related fuel burn variations.
AASA’s decision to formally support CO₂ Connect is therefore strategically significant. As the first airline association to do so, it positions African carriers as active participants in the global emissions accounting ecosystem, rather than passive recipients of externally generated metrics.
Transparency at the Point of Sale
Another quiet but consequential shift is taking place in the commercial sphere. Emissions data is increasingly being presented to passengers and corporate customers at the point of booking. Travel management companies, online booking platforms, and corporate travel programmes are integrating carbon information alongside price and schedule.
For airlines, this creates both risk and opportunity. Where carriers do not supply their own data, third parties will fill the gap, often using generic or outdated assumptions. Where airlines do participate, they retain influence over how their performance is represented.
Corporate travel buyers, in particular, are under growing pressure to account for Scope 3 emissions. They are demanding data that is consistent, auditable, and aligned with recognised standards. CO₂ Connect’s growing adoption by global distribution platforms and corporate travel managers reflects this shift. For African airlines seeking to remain competitive in these markets, credible emissions data is fast becoming a commercial necessity.
Measurement Before Mitigation
The partnership between AASA and IATA is also notable for what it does not claim. CO₂ Connect does not reduce emissions. It measures them. That distinction matters.
African airlines face well-documented structural constraints in decarbonisation, from limited access to Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) to capital pressures and infrastructure gaps. Pretending otherwise risks undermining credibility. What airlines can do, now, is ensure that emissions are measured accurately and consistently, creating a sound basis for future mitigation efforts.
Importantly, CO₂ Connect is already capable of accounting for emissions reductions linked to SAF usage. While SAF availability in Africa remains limited, airlines that adopt the tool will be technically ready to reflect reductions as supply becomes more accessible and affordable.
Avoiding Compliance Theatre
There is a growing risk in global aviation of “compliance theatre”, the appearance of environmental accountability without the substance. Generic calculators, opaque methodologies, and unverifiable assumptions may satisfy superficial reporting requirements, but they do little to prepare airlines for deeper regulatory scrutiny.
By contrast, data grounded in operational reality provides resilience. It allows airlines to explain, defend, and, where necessary, challenge emissions figures with confidence. It also supports internal decision-making, from fleet planning to route economics, by linking environmental performance directly to operational choices.
A Strategic Step Forward
AASA’s endorsement of IATA CO₂ Connect should therefore be understood not as a climate statement, but as a strategic one. In an environment where emissions data is increasingly used to inform policy, taxation, and commercial decisions, moving from estimates to evidence is no longer optional.
For African aviation, accurate emissions data is not the end of the sustainability journey, but it is an essential starting point. In a sector built on precision, safety, and accountability, how emissions are measured may prove just as important as how they are ultimately reduced.
