SASB Airlines

1. Download the SASB Airlines Standard: Access the free SASB Airlines standard via the SASB Navigator at sasb.org. No registration is required to download the standard document.

1. Identify Material Topics: Review the standard's disclosure topics specific to the airlines industry — including fuel management, greenhouse gas emissions, employee health and safety, and labor practices — and assess which are most material to your organization.

1. Conduct a Gap Analysis: Compare your organization's current ESG data collection and reporting practices against the SASB Airlines accounting metrics to identify gaps in data availability or reporting processes.

1. Assign Internal Ownership: Designate responsibility across relevant departments (operations, finance, HR, sustainability) for gathering and validating the required quantitative and qualitative data points.

1. Collect and Validate Data: Gather the required metrics — such as fuel consumption (gigajoules), GHG emissions (metric tons CO2e), fleet fuel efficiency, and noise-related complaints — ensuring data quality and auditability.

1. Draft Disclosures: Prepare disclosures using the SASB Airlines metrics and incorporate them into your annual report, sustainability report, or SEC filing (e.g., 10-K or proxy statement).

1. Align with ISSB/IFRS S1 & S2: Cross-reference your disclosures with IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards (S1 and S2), which incorporate SASB metrics, to ensure alignment with emerging global mandatory reporting requirements.

1. Publish and Communicate: Publish your SASB-aligned disclosures and notify key investors and ESG rating agencies (e.g., MSCI, Sustainalytics) of your reporting framework adoption to maximize stakeholder visibility.

The SASB Airlines standard organizes disclosure requirements into five core sustainability topics, each with specific quantitative accounting metrics and qualitative activity metrics.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions is the first topic, requiring disclosure of total gross Scope 1 GHG emissions (metric tons CO2e), a description of long-term and short-term strategy or plan to manage GHG emissions, and fuel consumption broken down by fuel type. Airlines must also report on fleet fuel efficiency (available seat kilometers per gigajoule).

Air Quality addresses non-GHG air pollutants, requiring disclosure of NOx, SOx, and particulate matter emissions from aircraft operations, particularly relevant for ground-level air quality near airports.

Noise Pollution requires airlines to report the number of noise-related complaints received and describe their approach to managing aircraft noise impacts on communities near airports, including fleet modernization and flight path optimization efforts.

Labor Practices covers workforce management, requiring disclosure of total recordable incident rate (TRIR), near-miss frequency rate, and fatality rate for employees and contract workers. It also addresses pilot fatigue management and compliance with rest regulations.

Competitive Behavior addresses antitrust and fair competition practices, requiring disclosure of legal proceedings related to anticompetitive behavior and the total amount of monetary losses from such proceedings.

Each topic includes both quantitative metrics (reported in standardized units) and qualitative narrative disclosures describing management approach, strategy, and risk mitigation. The standard does not prescribe a minimum score or threshold — organizations disclose against all applicable metrics and investors assess performance comparatively.

The SASB Airlines standard occupies a unique position in the ESG disclosure landscape as the most granular, industry-specific reporting framework for commercial aviation. Unlike broad frameworks such as GRI or TCFD, SASB's sector-specific approach means that every metric in the Airlines standard is considered financially material to that industry specifically — a distinction that has made it highly valued by institutional investors. Major asset managers including BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street have publicly encouraged or required portfolio companies to report using SASB standards, giving the framework significant market pull.

Adoption accelerated dramatically following the 2022 consolidation of SASB into the IFRS Foundation and the subsequent creation of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB). The ISSB's IFRS S1 and S2 standards, finalized in 2023, explicitly incorporate SASB industry-based metrics as the baseline for industry-specific disclosures. This means that as mandatory sustainability reporting spreads globally — through the EU's CSRD, the SEC's climate disclosure rules, and jurisdictions adopting ISSB standards — SASB Airlines metrics are increasingly becoming de facto regulatory requirements rather than voluntary best practices.

Within the airlines sector, adoption is concentrated among large publicly traded carriers in North America and Europe, where investor pressure and regulatory scrutiny are highest. Low-cost carriers and regional airlines have been slower to adopt. The framework competes primarily with GRI Standards (which are more widely adopted globally but less investor-focused) and CDP's climate disclosure platform (which is more emissions-focused). SASB's key differentiator is its explicit linkage to financial materiality and its integration into the emerging global mandatory reporting architecture via ISSB.

The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) was founded in 2011 by Jean Rogers in San Francisco, with a mission to develop industry-specific sustainability accounting standards that help public companies disclose material, decision-useful information to investors. Modeled loosely on the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), SASB took a rigorous, evidence-based approach to identifying which ESG topics are financially material for each of 77 distinct industries — including airlines. The Airlines standard was developed through a multi-stakeholder process involving industry participants, investors, and subject matter experts, with provisional standards published around 2014 and finalized standards released in 2018 following an extensive public comment period.

A pivotal milestone came in 2022 when SASB merged with the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) to form the Value Reporting Foundation, which was subsequently consolidated into the IFRS Foundation. This brought SASB under the governance of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), dramatically elevating the standards' global authority. In June 2023, the ISSB published IFRS S1 and S2, which formally incorporate SASB's industry-based metrics — including the Airlines standard — as the recommended basis for industry-specific disclosures. This transition transformed SASB from a voluntary U.S.-centric framework into a foundational component of the emerging global mandatory sustainability reporting architecture.