Impacts of the COVID-19 on all aircraft emissions of international routes in South America

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on South America’s economic development, as well as its international civil aviation industry. This paper seeks to calculate the emissions of six pollutions (CO(2), CO, HC, NOx, SO(2), and PM2.5) from the international routes in South America during 2019–2021 and discusses the impacts of COVID-19 on the emission change. The modified BFFM2-FOA-FPM method is proposed to unify the CO(2) and non-CO(2) calculations. The calculated results' average error rate is about 5.12%. The results showed that COVID-19 affected all emissions, including the number of routes, average flight distance, aircraft configuration, the proportion of CCD phase emissions, average emissions, etc. In addition, some airlines increased the number of flights and aircraft types during the pandemic, increasing emissions. The results give a reasonable data basis for the aviation industry in South America to formulate emission reduction policies.