Latin American airlines are already achieving measurable reductions in carbon intensity through newer aircraft, higher seat density and operational improvements. Cirium’s 2025 emissions data show that those gains can be substantial, while the ALTA/ICF pathway to 2050 also exposes their limit: efficiency can reduce the scale of aviation’s carbon challenge, but it cannot close the region’s net zero gap on its own.
Latin America’s efficiency gap is already measurable
Among the carriers included in Cirium’s 2025 Latin America intra-regional ranking, Chile-based JetSMART recorded the lowest carbon intensity at 57.9 grams of CO₂ per available seat kilometre (ASK). Mexico’s Volaris followed at 58.8g and VivaAerobus at 61.4g, while LATAM Airlines, the largest operator in the regional table by number of flights, recorded 66.6g. Brazil’s Azul posted the strongest year-on-year improvement, reducing its CO₂ per ASK by 3.3%. The gap between the first and tenth carriers reached 16.9 grams per ASK.
Cirium’s EmeraldSky benchmark goes beyond a theoretical calculation based only on aircraft type and route distance. The methodology combines tracked flight operations with aircraft-specific performance models and operational factors such as taxi times, air traffic control routing, holding patterns and ground delays. Cirium also separates fuel burn attributable to belly cargo from passenger emissions when assessing widebody operations.
Cirium’s 2025 Flight Emissions Review also shows why CO₂ per ASK needs to be interpreted carefully. Fleet age and seat density remain major drivers of airline efficiency, but lower carbon intensity does not automatically mean lower total emissions if an airline is simultaneously expanding its network. As Cirium states, “Efficiency per seat and total output do not always move together.”
Avianca shows what efficiency can deliver
Avianca provides one of the clearest examples of airline growth being separated from emissions growth. Between 2019 and 2024, Avianca increased available seat kilometres by 18.1% while reducing total carbon emissions by 5.1%, according to Cirium’s EmeraldSky analysis. Cirium describes that combination as unusual among large airlines because commercial aviation growth has traditionally been associated with higher fuel consumption and higher total emissions.
Avianca’s transformation between 2019 and 2024 was closely linked to changes in fleet composition and aircraft configuration. The airline removed much of its Airbus A319 fleet, retired older Airbus A330 aircraft, increased its A320neo fleet and expanded Boeing 787 operations. Avianca also moved away from regional jets and turboprops, while average aircraft capacity increased from 144 seats in 2019 to 181 seats.
Avianca’s carbon intensity consequently fell from 82.6 grams of CO₂ per ASK to 66.3 grams, an improvement of almost 20% between 2019 and 2024. The Avianca case shows how fleet deployment, aircraft size, cabin configuration and network strategy can deliver measurable environmental gains before technologies such as sustainable aviation fuel reach significant scale.
Fleet renewal is becoming a regional advantage
Avianca’s experience sits within a broader fleet transition across Latin America and the Caribbean. The ALTA/ICF study Net Zero Aviation in Latin America and the Caribbean: Pathways and Trade-offs reports that 38% of ASK departing the region were operated by new-generation aircraft in 2024, compared with 11% in 2019.
Latin America and the Caribbean also compare favourably with several larger aviation markets on that indicator. ALTA/ICF reports that new-generation aircraft represented 38% of regional ASK, compared with 34% in Europe, 34% in the United States and Canada, and 26% in Asia. The comparison suggests that fleet modernisation is already one of the region’s relative strengths in the transition toward lower-emission aviation.
Latin American and Caribbean airlines have more than 700 aircraft on order, with nearly 80% of the order book consisting of narrowbody aircraft. The ALTA/ICF study notes that aircraft such as the Airbus A320neo and Boeing 737 MAX can deliver fuel savings of around 15% to 20% compared with previous generations. Fleet renewal is therefore not simply a future pathway: airlines across the region have already committed significant capital to it.
Operational efficiency still has room to deliver
Operational efficiency represents the second major near-term opportunity identified by ALTA and ICF. The study describes operational improvements as “an essential and immediate opportunity” and estimates that changes across aircraft operations, airports, ground processes and flight-profile optimisation could reduce fuel consumption by between 3.3% and 11.3% by 2050.
The ALTA/ICF pathway includes measures such as greater use of fixed ground power and pre-conditioned air, increased single-engine taxiing, improved fuel-planning tools, electric ground equipment and more direct flight profiles. Many of these measures reduce operating costs as well as emissions, making operational efficiency one of the few decarbonisation levers capable of generating environmental and economic benefits simultaneously.
Latin American airlines cannot capture all of those gains independently. ALTA/ICF stresses that further efficiency improvements depend on airports, air navigation service providers, governments and regulators as well as carriers. Airspace design, airport infrastructure, ground operations and data sharing therefore make aviation efficiency a system-wide issue rather than solely an airline responsibility.
Efficiency reaches a limit before net zero
The ALTA/ICF modelling also shows where the efficiency pathway begins to reach its limit. Under a baseline with activity growth but no emission-reduction measures, jet fuel consumption in Latin America and the Caribbean would increase from 21.2 million tonnes in 2019 to 44.5 million tonnes in 2050. More efficient aircraft could reduce that requirement by 13.4 million tonnes, while operational efficiency could remove another 1.1 million tonnes.
Latin American and Caribbean aviation would nevertheless still consume around 29 million tonnes of jet fuel in 2050 after those improvements, according to the ALTA/ICF modelling. That remaining fuel use would generate approximately 111 million tonnes of CO₂-equivalent emissions on a well-to-wake basis. Fleet renewal and better operations can therefore substantially reduce the scale of the decarbonisation challenge without eliminating it.
The remaining emissions explain why the ALTA/ICF pathway still requires sustainable aviation fuel and carbon mechanisms after aircraft and operational improvements have been captured. The strategic value of efficiency is therefore not that it provides a complete net zero solution, but that it reduces the volume of residual emissions that other, more expensive or less mature mechanisms will eventually need to address.
The next challenge starts where efficiency ends
Latin American aviation already has measurable evidence that efficiency improvements can work. Cirium’s 2025 results reveal substantial differences between carriers, while Avianca demonstrates that a major airline can increase capacity and reduce total emissions over a multi-year period. The ALTA/ICF study shows that fleet renewal and operational efficiency could extend those gains across the regional aviation system.
Latin America and the Caribbean nevertheless face a harder challenge once those efficiency gains have been captured. New aircraft, denser and more productive fleets, better ground operations and more efficient flight profiles can lower fuel burn and carbon intensity, but ALTA/ICF still models substantial residual emissions in 2050. Efficiency can make the net zero challenge smaller. It cannot make it disappear.
Sources: Cirium, 2025 Flight Emissions Review, April 2026; ALTA & ICF, Net Zero Aviation in Latin America and the Caribbean: Pathways and Trade-offs, Final Report, March 2026.
