Mike Malik, Chief Industry Officer, Cirium
The quotes in this article are from JetSMART’s leadership team, provided in response to questions from Cirium ahead of publication.
Every airline efficiency story I come across follows the same pattern. An older fleet is phased out. Routes are restructured. A fuel programme nudges the numbers in the right direction, year by year.
JetSMART does not have a story like that. The airline launched in Chile in July 2017 with leased A320ceo aircraft, but within months had committed to something different. In November 2017, as part of the Indigo Partners order with Airbus, JetSMART placed orders for 56 A320neo and 14 A321neo aircraft. The first NEO entered service in October 2019. By 2025, the fleet had a weighted average age of 3.1 years, one of the youngest in the world for an airline of this size. When Cirium’s EmeraldSky data records JetSMART at 57.95 grams of CO₂ per available seat kilometre in 2025, it is measuring what that early commitment actually produced.
What caught my attention in the 2025 results is not the number. It is what sits alongside it. JetSMART’s operations grew by more than 32 percent in the period covered by the 2025 Review. Its CO₂ per ASK rose by 0.8 percent. That is what made me look more carefully.
Growth at Speed, Intensity Held Flat
JetSMART today holds Air Operator Certificates in Chile, Argentina, Peru, and Colombia, operates more than 85 routes across 50-plus destinations, and has carried more than 50 million passengers since launch, over 15 million of them flying for the first time. The fleet stands at 54 aircraft, predominantly A320 and A321 NEO variants, with a weighted average age of 3.1 years.
High seat density, consistently strong load factors, and a point-to-point network averaging around 1,000 kilometre sectors keep the operation away from the inefficiencies that build up at hub connections. The NEO family is at its most efficient in exactly this environment: frequent, short-to-medium sectors at high utilisation. JetSMART did not design its network around its emissions profile. It designed it around its cost model, and the two happen to point in the same direction.
“Operational efficiency has been part of JetSMART’s business model since day one. As an Ultra Low Cost airline, efficiency is not only a financial discipline, it is one of the main drivers behind lower emissions intensity.”
Staying Disciplined Across Four Countries
Network structure gets an airline a long way. Keeping intensity flat while adding 32 percent more flights across four countries, four civil aviation authorities, and four separate fuel supply chains is a different challenge entirely.
JetSMART’s SMARTFUEL programme is where the day-to-day discipline lives. Climb, cruise and descent profiles, speed management, single-engine taxi, cruise level selection, zero fuel weight accuracy, discretionary fuel management. None of these is unfamiliar to the industry. The point is that on a network of relatively short sectors, small per-flight losses compound quickly, and the only way to prevent that is to make the discipline habitual rather than managed flight by flight. The airline puts the cumulative impact at more than 100,000 tonnes of CO₂ avoided. Across 92,000 measured flights averaging around 1,000 kilometres, that number holds up.
JetSMART sets the efficiency framework centrally and relies on in-market teams to execute within local conditions. The 2025 results suggest that arrangement works.
A Different Kind of Emissions Story
Something in JetSMART’s story does not appear in any rankings table.
On many of the routes the airline serves, the practical alternative for most passengers is not another flight. It is 20 to 30 hours on an intercity bus. More than 15 million of JetSMART’s passengers had never flown before. The airline did not replace a competing service. It replaced a surface journey, or in many cases made a journey possible that was simply not being made.
“The Ultra Low Cost model has helped connect communities through two-hour flights, bringing people closer to job opportunities, education, family connections, and economic development that were previously out of reach.”
When a two-hour low-emissions flight replaces a 28-hour bus journey, the emissions picture at journey level looks rather different from what a flight ranking alone would show. Aviation rarely accounts for this, and I think it should, particularly in markets where connectivity is still being built rather than maintained. JetSMART raises this argument and I find it genuinely compelling. It does not change the fact that the airline’s absolute CO₂ will grow as the fleet expands toward 100 aircraft. Both are true, and it is worth the industry sitting with that.
What Comes Next
On SAF, JetSMART is direct: South America does not yet have the production capacity, distribution infrastructure, or price economics to make adoption viable at any real volume against a ULCC cost base. The airline is working through ALTA and in-country groups to help develop that market. Until it does, the performance case rests on what is already in place.
Some carriers in better-supplied markets have made SAF commitments that outrun the supply chains behind them. JetSMART has not done that, and the honesty is refreshing.
The 2025 results show an airline that committed early to the right fleet decisions and has kept its emissions performance there as the operation has grown. Whether the same discipline holds as the operation grows toward double its current size, across four markets that will each throw up their own complications, is a question the coming years will answer.
“For JetSMART, growth and efficiency are not opposing forces. They are part of the same model.”
Eight years in, JetSMART has made good on that claim. Whether it holds at 100 aircraft is what the next few EmeraldSky editions will tell us.
About EmeraldSky
EmeraldSky is Cirium’s emissions intelligence solution, combining the most complete aviation data available with advanced data modelling and emissions science. The EmeraldSky methodology achieved ISAE 3000 Reasonable Assurance following independent review by PwC, and is officially accredited by the Rocky Mountain Institute as a qualified flight emissions data provider under the Pegasus Guidelines.
