How is SkyTeam reporting on their corporate travel CO₂ emissions using IATA CO2 Connect?

SkyTeam is one of the world’s three major airline alliances, consisting of 18 member airlines globally. 

SkyTeam connects 945+ destinations worldwide in 145+ countries. It serves 605 million passengers annually with 13,800+ daily departures.  

The challenge: accurately calculate SkyTeam's Scope 3 business travel emissions as part of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting activities. 

The SkyTeam Airline Alliance Management office is in Amsterdam and has around 80 staff.  Being co-located at KLM HQ (which is powered by 100% renewable energy) and not operating any fuel-powered vehicles or equipment, SkyTeam's main environmental impacts relate to its Scope 3 business travel emissions.  However, there was limited experience using available tools to simply and accurately calculate the business travel emissions for one reporting year.  

The Solution: IATA CO2 Connect for Corporate Travel 

IATA's CO2 Connect for Corporate Travel tool provides corporates with highly accurate, airline verified CO₂ emissions data to improve transparency, reporting quality and progress toward net zero goals. It offers granular, standardized emissions calculations—updated regularly and available via API or file integrations—to support ESG reporting, carbon budgeting and informed sustainability decisions. 

Results and Impact:  

• The IATA CO2 Connect for Corporate Travel tool allowed for accurate calculation of SkyTeam's total business travel emissions for a reporting period, using only city pair information (mandatory inputs) and other optional inputs such as operating airline, flight date, passenger numbers and cabin class. 
• Results are presented as CO2 only, tank to wake (TTW), well to wake (WTW) and CO2 equivalent (CO2 and non-CO2 emissions) - per flight, and as a total for the reporting period. 
• Some manual data entry is required; however, this can be minimised by syncing the data inputs with the internal travel team's existing data sets. 
• The results show the relatively significant amount of SkyTeam's Scope 3 business travel emissions in a one-year period, which will drive internal discussions on how best to reduce these emissions through a new sustainable travel policy and other measures. 

Future Outlook:  

As part of their annual ESG reporting obligations through organisations such as EcoVadis and the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), SkyTeam plan to continue reporting on its Scope 3 business travel emissions using the IATA CO2 Connect for Corporate Travel tool.  With new sustainable travel policy in place, SkyTeam expect to see a reduction in these emissions over time, and with sufficient data will be able to set clear and achievable reduction targets in the future.