The impact of technology progress on aviation noise and emissions

This paper investigates the effects of incremental and substantial innovations on aviation emissions and noise levels among aircraft/engine combinations belonging to the Boeing B737 and the Airbus A320 families. We find a statistically significant impact of incremental technical progress on all environmental externalities both at the flight level and the passenger level. Although substantial innovation is found to have a limited impact at the flight level, a noteworthy positive effect exists on per-passenger externalities. These results point to the need for incentives in aviation technical progress in order to neutralize future negative environmental effects due to the expected traffic growth.