The impacts of the COVID-19 on the aircraft emissions from international routes from and to China

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the civil aviation exchange between China and foreign countries. But few studies have focused on the effects of COVID-19 on aviation emissions. This paper seeks to calculate the emissions of six pollution (CO₂, CO, HC, NOx, SO₂, and PM2.5) from the international routes from and to China during 2019–2021 and discusses the impacts of COVID-19 on the emission change. The Modified BFFM2-FOA-FPM method is proposed to unify the CO₂ and non-CO₂ calculations. The error rate between the calculated results and the official data from Civil Aviation Administration of China is about 2.74%. The results show that the COVID-19 has resulted in a reduction in overall emissions of the international routes from and to China, but the intensity of the unit passenger turnover has increased, and the overall emissions of some airlines have increased. Moreover, compared with 2020, there is no apparent recovery of international routes from and to China in 2021.