In 2022, I’ve flown 25 times where 16 of those were domestic flights and the rest 9 were international flights.

I’ve flown across the pacific 4 times (2 round trips between US and Korea); and across the atlantic 3 times (1.5 round trips between US and europe).

Carbon footprints

Calculating the carbon footprint of a flight is higly complex and varied. For SEA-ICN one way, I could obtain the following results using various online calculators:

  • 381.10kg (ICAO)
  • 1056kg (ecotree)
  • 499kg (IATA)
  • 2330kg (Sustainable Travel)
  • 1400kg (myclimate)
  • 2360kg (carbonfootprint.com)
  • 1082kg (CarbonCompute.com)

I don’t know much about the methods of flight carbon footprint, so I can’t discern the most accurate result. CarbonCompute.com is a project based on a research paper which can be found on https://www.carboncompute.com/how-it-works.

The algorithm uses live data meaing we have a huge database over all current and historical flights flewn all over the world. With this data we can match the exact aircraft your trip was, which fuel consumption was used by which engine, how many people were aboard, seating classes, height factor, winglets and more.

Unfortunately, their online tool (https://www.carboncompute.com/find-flight-number) doesn’t work so well. I’ll be using Flightera.net (uses CarbonCompute.com internally), which is how I came across it anyway.

Let’s start with international flights:

  • KE12: LAX-ICN: 1,700kg
  • DL196: ICN-SEA: 1,082kg
  • OG112: BOS-KEF: 400kg
  • OG400: KEF-CDG: 333kg
  • UA986: CDG-ORD: 798kg
  • KE42: SEA-ICN: 1,751kg
  • OZ204: ICN-LAX: 1,410kg
  • SK946: ORD-ARN: 1,136kg
  • SK577: ARN-CDG: 219kg

Total: 8829kg

According to EPA, this is equivalent to carbon emission of 2 cars, which is absolutely horrifying:

A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.

This assumes the average gasoline vehicle on the road today has a fuel economy of about 22.0 miles per gallon and drives around 11,500 miles per year.

https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle

For now, I’d estimate that the carbon footprint of my domestic flights would be equal. This means that I’ve owned and drove an equivalent of 4 cars this year.