How to compare airline climate targets: base year, scope, credits and reporting

To compare airline climate targets, you need more than the percentage. Air France-KLM's shows why. Its 2030 target used to be a 30% cut in emissions per revenue ton-kilometer (RTK) against 2019. It's now 17.8% against 2024. In grams, the old target ends at about 670 per RTK and the new one at about 763, by our arithmetic from the group's baselines of 957 for 2019 and 928 for 2024.

The group's 2025 filing explains the change: the target "has been updated in line with the Group latest strategic inputs, including the comprehensive 2024 GHG inventory and the Group's latest production forecast for 2030, which has been significantly revised downward compared to the one used for the Group's initial SBTi target."

The group estimates total 2030 jet-fuel emissions in line with 2024, about 32 million metric tons. Its previous statement said they "should remain below its 2019 level (36 million tons of CO2)."

Write down the base year, the end point in grams and the forecast behind each target before you line up two airlines. Here's the sheet we'd use, with eight airlines' published targets filled in from their own documents.

The fill-in sheet: nine fields to record for each airline

Copy this into your RFP or a spreadsheet, with one column per carrier. If a carrier's public documents leave a cell blank, ask the carrier to fill it in.

Eight airlines' climate targets, side by side

Here's how the main fields look for eight carriers, as of October 30, 2026. Re-check it before you rely on it, because airlines change these and SBTi updates its target dashboard weekly. It isn't a ranking, since the rows aren't on the same basis yet.

The "no" answers come from SBTi's near-term criteria, which say carbon credits "must not be counted as emission reductions" toward a validated target.

Base year: 2019, 2023 and 2024 are different starting lines

Any gain made between 2019 and a later base year counts toward a 2019 target and doesn't count toward a 2024 one. So Lufthansa's 30.6% from 2019 and Ryanair's 27% from 2023 describe different distances, and the percentages can't tell you which is further.

Ask each carrier for its base-year intensity in grams, then multiply through to the target-year end point. Baselines get restated as well. Air France-KLM's 2019 figure went from 948 to 957 grams when it changed its method to follow SBTi's recommendations more closely. Record which version you're comparing and ask what changed.

Intensity, gross or net: what the percentage measures

A percentage can describe emissions per unit carried, total emissions before credits, or total emissions after credits. An airline can meet the first while the second rises.

Delta's 2025 report shows this on one page. Jet-fuel emissions per RTK were 3.3% below 2019. Total jet-fuel emissions were 2.3% above 2019, with capacity up 8.2%. The 45% target is written on the per-RTK number. Delta's page adds that most of its absolute emissions growth "is due to methodology changes and addition of Scope 3 categories," so ask how much of the 2.3% that explains.

Air France-KLM's estimate that, "in the absence of unforeseen events," its 2030 emissions stay within 5% of 2024 is the kind of sentence to look for. A June 2026 paper in Environmental Research Letters found that 16 of 19 airlines with validated targets don't disclose projected capacity growth, and without that forecast you can't turn an intensity target into tons.

What the target covers: fuel, flights and freight

Two targets with the same percentage can be drawn around different emissions.

Tank-to-wake or well-to-wake?

Tank-to-wake counts burning the fuel. Well-to-wake adds producing and delivering it, and SBTi's aviation method requires it. Qantas's target covers Scopes 1 and 2 and leaves out Scope 3 (all categories), which is where SBTi's guidance puts upstream fuel emissions.

SBTi aviation targets also carry a footnote saying non-CO2 effects aren't included. Our guide to assessing airline emissions data covers how much that can change a flight's figure.

Regional partners and subcontracted flying

Lufthansa's target covers "owned operations." American's covers "owned and subcontracted operations." Delta puts Delta Connection carriers it doesn't wholly own in Scope 3, and a footnote says its target includes well-to-tank emissions "from all regional partners."

United's target adds Scope 3 category 4, "upstream transportation and distribution," and its 10-K tracks the target against mainline plus regional RTKs without saying which flights category 4 captures. If your travelers use regional feeders, ask the plain question: is a flight operated by a third-party regional carrier inside this target, in full?

Belly cargo

RTK puts passengers and freight in one number, with each passenger counted as 100 kilos under SBTi's method. Freight can move the result with no change in the cabin: in its 2026 financial year, Air New Zealand's emissions per RTK rose faster than its per-seat figure, "primarily due to a reduction in the cargo load carried." Ask each carrier how it splits a flight's emissions between passengers and belly freight.

Carbon credits and SAF: what counts toward the target

Our fact pack on SAF, carbon credits and renewables explains the instruments. The question here is how each target counts them.

Carbon credits

Credits are outside Lufthansa's validated 30.6% target and inside its voluntary 50% net goal, and its report calls them "indispensable as a compensation instrument." Qantas says meeting its compliance obligations "is counted towards our progress" on its 25% net target.

Air New Zealand's expected cut went from 20% to 25% in the 2025 guidance to 25% to 30% in 2026. Its statement gives two reasons: revised fleet and network assumptions "which reduce fuel use and gross emissions," plus "a higher anticipated CORSIA compliance obligation, which increases the volume of carbon credits the airline expects to purchase."

It's useful that they say so, because a net figure can improve when purchases rise. For its 2026 financial year, Air New Zealand reports 3.9 million metric tons gross and an estimated 3.5 million net.

SAF

Qantas, Air New Zealand and IAG all have 10% SAF by 2030 in their plans. Air New Zealand says its figure "remains an assumption" and puts global SAF at 0.6% of jet fuel in 2025. SBTi's aviation guidance counts only SAF that's been consumed, so an announced offtake deal doesn't move a validated number.

If your company pays for SAF, ask who claims the reduction. Air New Zealand warns that its intensity figures "include SAF emissions reductions allocated to customers" and shouldn't be used in customers' own reporting.

What SBTi validation tells you, and the 2050 gap

Validation means the target passed SBTi's method. SBTi's own disclaimer says it "does not offer any assurance that a given entity will achieve, or is on track to achieve, its validated science-based target." So record the status, and still fill in field nine.

Don't read much into the label on a target ending by 2031. Air France-KLM's moved from well below 2°C to 1.5°C, but SBTi's interim 1.5°C pathway, added in February 2023, matches the well below 2°C one through 2031. Both put the sector's required intensity cut at 29.6% by 2030 against 2019, and an individual airline's number can differ.

On October 30, 2026, SBTi's dashboard showed 18 companies under airlines with validated near-term targets, and IAG's commitment as expired. Qantas and Air New Zealand aren't listed. That only means SBTi hasn't checked their current numbers. The same June 2026 paper argues the bar is low: absolute cuts for 2019 to 2035 in SBTi's aviation pathways are 31 to 44 percentage points smaller than in the global pathways behind them.

Few 2050 goals have been checked at all. Azul is the only company under airlines with a validated net-zero target. Delta says validation of its 2050 goal "has been delayed pending updated SBTi guidance," and SBTi's dashboard lists Delta's, Lufthansa's and United's net-zero commitments as expired, while their near-term targets stay validated.

We'd give most of the weight to the near-term target, because you can check it during the life of a preferred-airline deal.

Progress reporting: ask for the number in the target's own unit

SBTi's criteria ask companies to report progress publicly every year. These are the figures we could read in airlines' own documents:

American's 10-K and Ryanair's release give no progress figure, and we haven't read either airline's sustainability report, so they have no row. Ask them directly. Qantas's report charts gross emissions from FY19 to FY25, so ask it for the net figure against 2019.

Lufthansa publishes its projected contributions (15.3% from fleet, 3.9% from operations and 3.4% from SAF), which is more than 13 of the 19 airlines in the Environmental Research Letters paper do. Added together, those three come to 22.6 points of the 30.6 (our arithmetic, assuming they add).

The report calls them projections "based on current framework conditions" and plans a revalidation in 2026, so ask what covers the difference.

Twelve of those 19 airlines had commissioned an external audit, and none of those audits mentioned the ambition of the airline's measures against its target. An inventory audit tells you the count is reliable. It won't tell you whether the target is reachable.

Using the sheet in a carrier review

Here's how we'd run it for a preferred-airline round:

1. Fill in what's public, then send the blanks. Date each cell and name the document.
2. Convert before you compare. Line up target-year end points in one unit and one boundary. Where you can't, say so in the evaluation.
3. Keep two scores. Record how far the target goes and how far the airline has got, and refresh both each year.

If you only have an hour, fill in three fields: the end point in grams, what's inside the boundary, and progress in the target's own unit.

For the rest of the evaluation, see our guides to testing airline climate claims in procurement and sustainability criteria for a preferred-airline program.

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