Airline bosses have mounted a robust defence of their industry in the teeth of sustained government and environmental pressure.
Speaking at the tenth anniversary celebrations of the Star Alliance, Lufthansa chairman and chief executive, Wolfgang Mayrhuber, insisted that the industry had to become more 'selfish' to get its message across, despite relentless media and political hostility.
"The reality is there is some uncertainty surrounding aviation and we have to concentrate better," he said, adding: "It is in our best selfish interest to reduce emissions and lower fuel burn.
"We don't need to be in defensive mode - aviation is the most ecologically sound transportation means for distances beyond 350km. We need to fly like birds and those who create the traffic jams that pollute the air, must make sure that these bottlenecks are solved - we could have a massive (emissions) reduction in the future."
Mayrhuber criticised the current maelstrom swirling around aviation and the environment as "ridiculous," and weighed into other transport modes, who, in his view, took far more land usage and consumed vast amounts of fossil fuels.
"If you believe that 6.5 billion residents on earth want a better life, you have to look at who is using fossil fuel," he said, adding; "We consumer 4.4l per passenger per 100km, while the most modern car hardly goes below 10l per passenger."
And the Lufthansa boss made a passionate plea for the introduction of a single sky system in Europe to improve air traffic control efficiency, rather than aircraft being obliged to operate under the current cumbersome system.
"Why do we need to fly with 7.5t of extra fuel from Frankfurt to Beijing - we are not a railroad," he said. "Why do we need to congest airports in order to demonstrate to the public that we need a new runway?"
His counterpart at Air New Zealand - a carrier operating some of the longest routes in the world - echoed Mayrhuber's sentiments. "New Zealand is a very remote area of the world but it is very easy for the environmental cause to be a smokescreen," said Air New Zealand, CEO, Rob Fyfe.
"We have seen the price of fuel escalate but surcharges have not depressed demand. Putting uniform taxes on air fares is not an environmental solution, it is a political solution. Politicians like the short term, but they will be found out."