Outlines of Sustainable Air Transportation in ICAO Annex Documents: Roots of Sustainability

Sustainability in aviation assesses three dimensions; social, economic, and environmental domains have many specific focus areas to measure sustainable aviation. On the other hand, ICAO Annex documents aim to standardize aviation industry to harmonize the other elements of aviation, which are airlines, airports, and ground handling companies. Annex documents have succeeded these three stakeholders in those three domains of sustainability. The nature of standardization led organizations to survive for centuries; so sustainability and standardization can be accepted as closed phenomenons. This chapter investigates the roots and index of sustainability by examining each possible index to match the sub-criteria of each domain. As a first step, studies have focused on economic sustainability, which is key to commercial companies’ primary target. However, standardization in the annex document targeted social and environmental factors rather than economic ones. Furthermore, all domains have been discussed in the conclusion section.