I think the reason flying is so often vilified is because it represents a huge proportion of an individual's emissions. The reason flying represented only 2.5%

I think the reason flying is so often vilified is because it represents a huge proportion of an individual's emissions. The reason flying represented only 2.5% of global emissions is because most people never do it. There's a small subset of people, mainly in the West, who do the vast majority of flying. As this BBC article makes clear, a return flight from London to San Francisco represents half the emissions of the average London resident. If you fly a couple of return long haul trips a year, they'll emit the same as everything else you do for the rest of the year. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200218-climate-change-how-to-cut-your-carbon-emissions-when-flying https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200218-climate-change-h... Looking at old aircraft will make the figures seem worse, but it's not like new aircraft are an order of magnitude more efficient. The best case budget airlines (high seat density and high seat utilisation) today get about 2.27L/100km for each seat. The 737-300 was about 3.46L/100km - so about 65% of what it used to be. Better for sure, but not "we've fixed the problem" better. I'm not sure to what extent those figures take into account changing seat density and utilisation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft