Avoiding the Predictable Surprise: Early Action Is the Key to Building a Climate-Resilient Aviation Network

Abstract

Impacts of climate change, such as sea level rise, higher temperatures and greater weather extremes create an operational, financial and business risk for European aviation. However these are risks which the sector can work to avoid by taking early, and cost-effective, action. A growing but limited number of stakeholders are already implementing comprehensive resilience measures. Yet, a survey of European aviation organisations shows that although awareness is growing many stakeholders are still not acting, often due to a lack of information and guidance. Five key recommendations have been developed to promote cost-effective climate resilience within the sector. These include local and network-wide risk assessment, better use of MET information and the implementation of ‘no-regrets’ or ‘win-win’ measures which also address issues such as capacity. Overall, climate change is an issue of risk management and early action is the key to cost-effective mitigation of those risks.