Podcast: What Airlines Can—And Can't—Control When It Comes To Sustainability

Listen in as Maria del Mar Whittaker, Abra Group's chief corporate responsibility officer, discusses airline sustainability in Latin America and beyond. Recorded at Routes Americas 2026 in Rio.

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Aaron Karp: Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us for Window Seat, our Aviation Week Air Transport podcast. I'm Aaron Karp, a senior editor with Air Transport World and Routes. Today's podcast comes to you from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and the topic is sustainability in Latin America. Airline and airport leaders have come to Rio for the Routes World 2026 Conference, and aviation environmental sustainability has been a key focus. Today, we are joined by Maria del Mar Whittaker, Chief Corporate Responsibility Officer for ABRA Group. ABRA includes Colombian airline Avianca and Brazilian airline GOL. Spanish wet lease operator Wamos is also part of the group. Maria's responsible for charting ABRA's sustainability strategy, which means she has to confront some particular challenges in this region. We were just having a fireside chat discussion here at the conference, and one of the things we talked about was what airlines can control and what they can't control in terms of sustainability.

So I think it'd be a good place to start talking about what airlines can control in the here and now and what airlines are doing, and particularly the ABRA group in making things more efficient and more sustainable in the here and now.

Maria del Mar Whittaker: Thank you. And thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be talking to you today. So absolutely, there's plenty we can control and plenty we can't. So we see sustainability in three buckets, right? You have the operational efficiencies dimension, which is primarily things we can control like fleet and fleet renewals and new aircraft can reduce emissions by 15 or even 25% in some instances. And all our world-class fuel efficiency programs. With that, we have been able to ... We were recognized by Skytrax. Avianca was recognized by Skytrax by being the leading airline in the world to be able to grow while reducing emissions and reducing emissions intensity by nearly 20% in five years as an extraordinary achievement. So that's something we can control. The second bucket is the bucket of the technologies that are coming up and that includes SAF or offsetting of the residual emissions.

And there there's plenty of things we can and we cannot control. On SAF, what we are doing is we're focusing on making sure the solutions that the regions are suitable for the realities of the region. So airlines operate in a very different environment than in other more developed countries. We operate in a vast territory. We connect regions that are disconnected by other means. Land transport is limited. Infrastructure is limited. So we are working on that and making sure that the sustainability of the industry is aligned. We'll talk about SAF in a second. But in terms of the third element is there's a lot airlines can do also to support the sustainability efforts of our destinations. That's another thing we can do. And we can do today. We have initiatives where we transport recycling back from islands, tourist destination islands like San Andrés and Galápagos.

And we transported around 35 tons last year, so that's sort of a very proud achievement. And we're working closely also with the communities and NGOs where we use the aircraft to transport people, for example, scientists or biologists that can restore coral reefs, but also generate awareness. So we can support the destinations by ... And we did an activation last year in San Andrés to remind people not to take seashells, right? That's something we can control and that's immediate impact that we can have today on contributing to sustainability. In terms of the areas that we can't control on those three dimensions, on operational efficiencies clearly working with governments and airports. Air traffic control efficiencies are the single most sort of easy win we could have because every minute we reduce flight time, there's less emissions produced and also benefits in terms of cost, noise and general comfort for everyone.

So that's an area where we're working with governments as well as with the airports in terms of the work that can be done on the ground. But those are the dimensions, plenty to do and plenty we can control also.

Aaron Karp: And you mentioned sustainable aviation fuel, which always is a very hot topic with airlines for several years now. And where do you think things stand? It seems to me that in the last year or so, there have been more questions about whether this is a viable long-term means of airlines reaching their net zero goals. How do you see SAF right now as a solution over the next, say, 10, 20 years? And what has to happen both in the world and regionally for airlines to be able to genuinely have enough SAF to fuel their fleets?

Maria del Mar Whittaker: Yeah. So at ABRA, we've been obviously focusing quite successfully on our operational efficiency and fleet renewal and investing in that whilst trying to understand what's the best route for the region in terms of SAF. Clearly, you can't reduce all of the emissions with fleet or operational efficiency. So SAF is a must have. The questions are around affordability and sustainability of SAF, right? So in terms of affordability in the region, the cost of fuel itself is already one of the highest in the world. In Brazil, it can be around 40% of our operating costs. That is several times more than in other regions. So when you consider that SAF is multiple times the cost of jet fuel, and when you consider that the demand elasticity in the region is very different from other regions, then the capacity to pay from the passenger is different. Then that's a key consideration for ... There's also the element of for every flight a Latin American does, a North American would take six.

So it's a very emerging market. We provide essential connectivity, so we need to be very considered about that. However, the region does have a lot of opportunities and skills and technologies that it can export to be able to support the requirements of SAF to the world. So we are engaging with the ecosystem to make sure that the airlines can support that effort because it's in everybody's interest. And we see there's a lot of innovation, there's a lot of excitement, but now we're getting to the point that we need to solve the issue of the bankability of the demand. And why is that? Well, because the margins of airlines are sort of different than the land transport sector where the region has been successful in terms of biofuels. And so how do we support that price differential? And there is a lot of innovation in these conversations.

There's the willingness to discuss how do we share the risk? How do we find the right investors and how do we support the right strategies for each country? Because clearly the markets where Latin America can aspire to or through Europe or Asia have their own roadmaps and necessities. So we need to produce a SAF that has a big market where we can achieve economies of scale and where we can all coalesce around and be supportive. And the role of the airlines in the region is important as sort of enablers of that system.

Aaron Karp: And how about governments? I believe that Brazil has a 1% SAF mandate coming up. And what I hear from the airlines being down here is that could be problematic because there just wouldn't be enough SAF to reach that target. What can the governments do to be realistic themselves and also to support the development of SAF?

Maria del Mar Whittaker: Yeah, absolutely. So there are no projects that have gone past FID in Brazil and demand starts next year. So the availability is an issue, but even more so than availability is the affordability side of things because ticket prices are going to go up as part of this mandate under the current conditions. So what we are working with the government of Brazil is on mechanisms to reduce the impact of that price of SAF, because Brazil has done great work in terms of the technical legislation on SAF. They have done brilliantly in terms of designing a book and claims domestic book and claim system so that you cut out a lot of the potential inefficiencies in a vast market and you're reducing transport of products. But now we also, they have done a good job in terms of the incentives for the production of SAF.

But as we can see in Europe, incentives to produce production does not translate into incentives or into reduction in price. So the conversation now is firmly in terms of price on how do we protect the Brazilian passenger and connectivity that the Brazilian cities and regions need from the airlines while supporting the ambitions of Brazil to develop SAF and reducing emissions, of course. And the airlines are wholly committed to reduce emissions. We have a track record of showing that already at ABRA Group. So that's sort of a complete package of discussions, but firmly focusing on how do we address the issue of price and the demand in order for these projects to get funding.

Aaron Karp: You mentioned that air traffic control is an easy win. What can happen in the region, particularly to make the skies more efficient? And how much of a gain would you get if there was air traffic control reform in Latin America?

Maria del Mar Whittaker: So we are working with stakeholders and partners and the governments and authorities on identifying that. It's early days to be very precise about the emissions measurements, but we do know that there are areas around, for example, regional integration or discussions of inefficiencies between countries is one, and that's we are all promoting engagement between the countries in terms of air traffic control and sort of streamlining the airspace. And then in specific countries, say in Colombia with El Dorado, the discussions around Palenque and around really increasing efficiencies there and technology, right? Investment and reducing congestion. So those are the three elements that would make a significant difference. Around 54% of all flights in Latin America fly from very congested airports. Airport congestion increases emissions, increases costs, but also discomfort and time flown, noise, etc. So that is the single most important issue we are trying to promote and also bring to the table that it matters in terms of climate, right? It's not just a sort of a choice. It's something we need to do.

Aaron Karp: And how about airports on the ground? What can they do to manage their operations to help airlines become more efficient and for them themselves to reduce their emissions?

Maria del Mar Whittaker: Yeah, there's plenty that can be done. The APU of particularly Guarulhos and Congonhas are initiatives that we've been working with them for a while because every bit of energy that we save on the ground also matters and having the right equipment and looking at electrification and moving beyond the complex logistics that sometimes these airports have for aircraft. So the landing and takeoff methods and whatnot. We also are working with airports in terms of using solar panels, electric vehicles, and whatnot, all of the things that we can jointly implement to reduce emissions.

Aaron Karp: And how about other technologies? You talked about electrification on the ground. What about electrification of aircraft in the air, particularly there's some work on short haul flights, and then how realistic, for example, hydrogen fuel could be as a solution?

Maria del Mar Whittaker: Yeah, that takes me back to the realities of the region we operate in. So this is a very emerging space and also the fleet renewals have gone at pace. So it's a very relatively younger fleet than in more developed countries. And hydrogen seems a little bit far off, but we are sort of following developments and interested in all of the solutions. Clearly hydrogen as a fuel is a widely available sort of interest to the region. So there's potential for the region to supply e-fuels or hydrogen itself, but the implementation of that might take time. The implementation of hydrogen requires also quite a lot of infrastructure development in airports and space, safety and whatnot and storage. So it's a completely new supply chain and distribution chain that needs to be developed. So that will probably take some time. On the electrification of short-haul flights, we are also observing clearly sort of Europe or the US and Asia have vast volumes of short haul flights where we will see some innovation and we will be sort of tracking and seeing where does it apply.

There's other topics like flight formation, for example, but you need sort of high volume of flights to make that justification. So again, we are seeing it all through the lens of our region. We're focusing what we can control now that is operational efficiencies fleet and working with the authorities to make sure that the air traffic is more efficient while supporting the long-term view of SAF. There's also another interesting topic for the region that is, what is the role that the airlines could do in terms of supporting the very fragile and unique and much necessary ecosystems that the region has, right? And that's something we could also potentially do today. And we are engaging with governments and authorities to understand, well, that may be that's a very valid route for the region.

Aaron Karp: One final question. We really appreciate your time. If you look at the long-term picture, how realistic is it? How optimistic are you that airlines can reach the net zero targets and the promises they've made in terms of their emission reductions?

Maria del Mar Whittaker: Well, we are showing results at ABRA, we are focusing on what we can do and on what we can influence. And from that perspective, we have done amazing strides. So the results from Avianca, sort of 20% emissions reduction, emissions intensity reduction is incredible. We know we are much more efficient in the fuel used than our peers in the region too. We are very optimistic about our new fleet. Clearly there's sort of some hiccups in terms of adoption and new engines and whatnot, but every new flight is an accumulation of emissions reductions going forward. And then we are optimistic that we'll get the right policies in place because this is of everybody's interest and we will manage through the risks. I can't speak for other airlines, but what we can control is that we want to show results and we're showing them already.

Aaron Karp: Well, Maria, thank you so much for taking time to sit down with Window Seat today.

Maria del Mar Whittaker: Thank you very much.

Aaron Karp: That's all of our time for today. Thank you to Maria and thank you to our listeners and many thanks to our producer, Corey Hitt. Make sure you don't miss us each week by subscribing to Window Seat on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen. This is Aaron Karp disembarking from Window Seat.