Global technology company Travelport has announced the launch of a more transparent way of estimating carbon emissions for flights on its Travelport+ product.
Flight emissions will be calculated using the publicly accessible Travel Impact Model (TIM), which has been developed by Google in partnership with the Travalyst coalition.
TIM combines data from flights including origin and destination, aircraft type, cabin class and even seat configuration, as well as load factors and average aircraft utilisation to estimate the emissions for each flight per passenger.
The data is free and available publicly via an API. Travelport
previously used Climate Neutral Group to provide flight emissions
information but changed to TIM in order to “help promote industry
standardisation of emission data” and to offer full transparency and
visibility into the underlying calculation framework that comes with a
publicly available model.
Travelport will offer agents and travellers the ability to compare CO2 estimates generated by the TIM per flight, per passenger, across carriers and at the point of sale.
The new feature will make it easier for agents and travellers to choose carbon-conscious trip options and will help Travelport align with all of the major global travel platforms to provide more transparency.
Tom Kershaw, chief product and technology officer at Travelport said: “Agents and travellers are seeing different carbon emissions scores and rankings for the exact same flight options when searching them in different channels. As an industry, adopting a free, publicly accessible data framework will allow us all to be more transparent and consistent in the way travel options are displayed and scored based on factors like carbon emissions, environmental certifications, or waste initiatives.
“We’re committed to standardising the information on the environmental impact of transportation and accommodation options and displaying it in a way that makes it easy for agents and customers to incorporate that information in their decisions.”
TIM was developed by Google, in partnership with the Travalyst coalition, an independent not-for-profit organisation of which Travelport is a member.
Kershaw added: “Travelport joined the Travalyst coalition in 2022 to help drive the standardisation and scale of environmentally conscious travel information across travel platforms.”
TIM carbon emission estimates for air segments can be accessed via
Smartpoint, Trip Quote and the Travelport API Suite in the Flight
Service Information Display and In-Flight Search Response views.
Travelport recently announced a 'game-changing' aquisition when it confirmed the integration of Deem’s corporate booking tool into its Travelport+ platform.