FAQ - One Destination

Our 3-year Business Plan 2008 to 2011 sets out the airline’s future direction. Corporate Responsibility sits at the heart of this as one of four key themes that underpin the plan.

We are committed to growing our business in a responsible way, which is why Corporate Responsibility has been put centre stage to this plan.

Our Corporate Responsibility goals have been based on a number of principles specific to each of our four Corporate Responsibility pillars.

These principles have been designed to inform our goals and are based around the company’s areas where we can make the most significant difference. For the Environment pillar, our objectives are to reduce waste, carbon emissions, noise and improve local air quality. For the Community pillar, supporting charities and communities around the world is the guiding principle.

For Marketplace, the aim is to encourage our customers to be committed to Corporate Responsibility whilst for Workplace, we would like to involve our colleagues to be committed to Corporate Responsibility.

We believe this is very much a personal choice.

We accept airlines pollute, but this must be put into context. Aviation accounts for no more than 2% of global CO2 and according to the UN, will rise to 3% by 2050. This is a fraction of the level produced by industries such as electricity generation or road transport.

Even so, British Airways is proactively working to reduce its emissions through purchasing new, cleaner aircraft, implementing more efficient operational procedures and employing improved working practices. We have already achieved a 28% improvement in carbon efficiency since 1990 and we’ve set a new target to halve CO2 emissions by 2050.

As well as improving the way we fly we also offer customers the opportunity to support low carbon community projects across the UK through making a donation to the One Destination Carbon Fund.

The global benefits aviation brings should also be taken into account. From supporting business to simply connecting family and friends, aviation has many plus points.

In offering a service that brings many benefits and by reducing our environmental impact wherever possible, we believe flying has a future but the final decision is up to the individual.

The major source of our carbon emissions comes from burning fuel. In order to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions, the best thing we can do is make our current operation more fuel efficient.

We can do this in a number of ways including; flying shorter and more direct routes, purchasing cleaner more efficient aircraft, reducing the weight on board our aircraft and reducing the amount of time we run the auxiliary power unit - the engine at the rear of the aircraft that provides power for aircraft systems on the ground.

All these small changes add up to large carbon savings. In the longer term, the new aircraft we are investing in are crucial in combating climate change. The new aircraft are also estimated to provide fuel savings, which go along way to delivering our target of improving fuel efficiency by 25% by 2025.

We also believe that an effective EU Emissions Trading Scheme is an important step towards a global framework for aviation emissions.

The EU plans to introduce the trading scheme for all flights into and out of Europe from 2012. We continue to lobby for the EU process to be restricted to intra-EU travel and to negotiate a global agreement for inter-continental aviation emissions. Our work with IATA, ICAO and other industry bodies to assist in global policy development now and beyond the Kyoto agreement, will focus on how this global framework can sensibly be delivered.

Aviation recognises that it needs to contribute towards tackling climate change and is working towards minimising its impact on the environment.

British Airways has provided long-standing support for the inclusion of aviation in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.

The original proposals have been made more financially burdensome for airlines, by increasing the proportion of carbon allowances that are subject to auctioning and lowering the cap on 'free' allowances.

The proposed changes are estimated to increase the cost of the scheme for EU airlines as a whole, from £36 billion to £91 billion over the first 11 years.

We have concerns about the imposition of this scheme on foreign airlines flying into the EU. We believe it will lead to a negative legal battle at a time when we need a constructive debate on a global solution.

If implemented as it now stands, without a global solution for aviation in place, the scheme will lead to a significant competitive disadvantage for EU airlines, resulting in job losses and a reduction in services as international passengers by-pass European hubs.

It would be far better to implement this scheme initially for intra-EU flights only, and to widen it to intercontinental flights when a global scheme that includes aviation is in place.

While we support the principle of the Emissions Trading Scheme, we believe the scheme should be based on a straightforward cap and trade system, and should replace existing so-called green taxes, such as Air Passenger Duty and its proposed Aviation Duty successor.

So we hope sensible decisions are made in Brussels and we can start in 2012 with an emissions trading scheme that quickly becomes the model for the rest of the world to follow.

It has long been a core policy of British Airways to work with the communities in which we operate.

It is also important for our employees who live in the areas surrounding our airports to engage with those communities and to feel proud that British Airways as an employer takes its corporate responsibilities seriously.

Our company works to five corporate priorities for Community Investment: Education and youth development, supporting our employees through their volunteering endeavours, environment, heritage and sustainable tourism.

As well as supporting internationally renowned organisations such as the Natural History Museum and Kew Gardens, we provide funding, support and expertise to a wide range of organisations at global level. These range from supporting sporting programmes for young people with physical disabilities across the UK, backing a rehabilitation centre for destitute and homeless women and children in Bangladesh, to supporting elephant conservation programmes in Africa.

We work in partnership with our suppliers to minimise our environmental impacts and build ethical sourcing practices into our supply chains. To reinforce this we set ourselves the goal of auditing all of key suppliers for ethical practices by 2012.

Within British Airways we constantly reviews the products used and recently we decided to purchase our on board coffee from Rainforest Alliance.

We constantly review our suppliers and are currently looking to further integrate ethical procurement practices into our strategic sourcing processes.