As attention turns to what emergence from the pandemic might look like and our prospects of entrenching green imperatives in our recovery infrastructure, one of the major points of discussion in aviation is the ‘green strings’ potentially attached to government bailouts of airlines.

Green strings are bailout conditions relating to climate change goals, requiring the recipient of the funding to operate in a certain way (such as limiting flights covering routes already well served by rail links), observe certain targets or restrictions (such as using prescribed percentages of sustainable aviation fuel or making identified emissions reductions), and achieve certain goals (such as upgrading a fleet to include more efficient equipment).

While the issues are incredibly complex, there are arguments to be made that conditional bailouts could be a far more effective tool than those without strings, and would provide the opportunity to stimulate aviation’s performance in terms of both economic recovery and environmental improvements – you can find more details in our article here: Airline bailouts: a golden opportunity to take balance sheets from red, to black, to green.