India just told the airline industry: no more guessing games on emissions.
The DGCA is set to mandate that every airline flying international routes out of India — Indian or foreign — must report at least 90% of their annual carbon emissions from those flights.
And alongside it, India has locked in a fuel roadmap that quietly changes how your future flights get powered.
Here's the simplest way to understand it.
Every time a plane flies internationally, it burns fuel and releases carbon.
Until now, there's been no strict, standardized system forcing every airline in India to report exactly how much.
That's about to end.
Blame — or credit — a global rulebook called CORSIA.
That's short for the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation, a UN-backed system that every major aviation nation is signing onto.
Its mandatory phase kicks in on January 1, 2027.
Once that happens, airlines that pollute beyond a set baseline will have to offset it — buying carbon credits or switching to cleaner fuel.
But you can't offset what you haven't measured.
👉 That's exactly why the reporting mandate comes first.
India has agreed to blend Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) into regular jet fuel, on a strict timeline:
SAF isn't some futuristic fantasy fuel.
It's made from things like used cooking oil, agricultural waste, and other non-fossil sources — and it can be blended directly into the jet fuel planes already use, no engine redesign needed.
The catch?
SAF costs significantly more to produce than regular jet fuel — which is exactly why the government has said the 1% target must be hit "in a cost-effective manner," without dumping the bill onto passengers.
This isn't just paperwork. India is racing to build the supply chain at home.
Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu put it plainly after chairing a stakeholder meeting last week: the goal is to get India's refineries producing SAF domestically instead of relying on imports, while keeping flying affordable.
Aviation might feel like a small slice of the climate problem, but globally it accounts for roughly 2-3% of all human-caused CO2 emissions — and unlike cars, planes can't simply switch to batteries.
That's the whole reason SAF exists — it's currently the only real lever the industry has to cut emissions at scale without grounding flights.
So when India sets a 90% emissions-reporting floor and a hard 2030 blending target, it's not bureaucratic box-ticking.
It's India positioning itself to stay compliant in a world where flying dirty is about to get expensive — through carbon offset costs under CORSIA — and where flying clean is about to become a competitive edge.
The draft SAF policy is in its final stages.
The reporting mandate is expected to follow soon.
By 2027, every international flight touching Indian soil will be counted, measured, and nudged toward greener fuel — whether the industry is fully ready or not.
That's all for now!
