KEY POINTS:
For Air New Zealand, tree hugging really counts. Prime Minister Helen Clark's presence at the airline's environment programme launch yesterday was testimony to the symbolic importance of the event.
The airline is hardly a late convert to the green cause but is something of a slow starter to get aboard the carbon offset bandwagon. Aside from an environment trust which will fund research and plant trees on a Hawkes Bay farm, the programme is very much like those of other airlines.
There's scepticism around carbon offset programmes whose critics say don't have a major impact on emissions, but only make passengers feel better about polluting the environment because they pay a fee for it
They say the methodology is a bit questionable too - calculating CO2 emissions is an inexact science given inflight variables,
Fair enough, but if there's any greenie points floating around the cut-throat airline business, Air New Zealand needs to grab as many as it can.
Of all airlines, its need to be green is most pressing; fuel costs account for more than half of expenses on long-haul flights.
It's an easy job for any environmentally guilt-plagued tourist on the other side of the world to figure that adds up to a big carbon footprint - about two-and-half tonnes.
Adding to the grim picture is Otago University research which shows emissions from visitors' air travel here equals total emissions from the country's coal, gas and oil-fired power generation.
And it's not only environmentalists who are getting antsey about aviation, European governments in particular are waving the big stick of a carbon tax.
Then there's the soaring cost of the eight million barrels of fuel the airline burns every year. Following the announcement of the airline's first half result, chief executive Rob Fyfe said future profits were all about fuel which is now locked in at relatively cheap rates but these start to run dry towards the end of this year and even worse next year.
Fyfe is zealous about being green. The way he sees it the airline, and the country's $17 billion tourism industry does not have a choice.
Unlike other airlines, where guaranteed revenue comes from business travellers, Air New Zealand relies on leisure travellers for around two-thirds of its turnover. Many of this group would look for the greenest carrier, or worse still, not come to New Zealand at all.
Yesterday's announcement has provided the momentum to the appearance of being green but the really important work has been underway for years. The biofuel trial on a jumbo jet is on target for later this year but it's the incremental work that's already making a difference.
Removing footrests from the economy section of transpacific 747s, has literally saved a tonne in weight, flight deck paperwork is now in electronic form, engines more regularly washed with a citrus-based cleaner are up to three per cent more efficient.
All promising. So with the fuzzies passengers around the world may feel about knowing kowhai will be planted in Hawkes Bay combined with the bigger gains already made may happily coincide with tourist industry prosperity and the airline's bottom line.
