Thousands of United Airlines frequent flyers, along with tens of thousands of everyday flyers, have signed a letter urging the airline and its CEO Jeff Smisek to “lead on climate, or at least get out of the way, by ending its lobbying against policies that would significantly cut pollution,” according to a statement by the group Flying Clean which generated the petition.

FlyingClean, an alliance of groups including the Sierra Club and Global Call for Climate Action, said the petition received 85,000 electronic signatures including over 500 United Airlines premier status frequent flyers. Among them are billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer,  20 members of United’s invitation-only Global Services program and frequent flyer guru Randy Peterson.

The petition was delivered at the start of a week of key meetings of the international group working to set a standard for aviation pollution, and two days before United’s annual shareholder meeting. The letter said that “voluntary actions United has taken are not keeping up with the soaring levels of airplane pollution.”

It claimed that “United and other airlines have been deploying lawyers, PR experts, and lobbyists to fight common sense, low cost policies that would reduce airplane pollution.  United’s trade association, Airlines for America, of which you [Jeff Smisek] are the Vice Chairman, has taken an uncompromising stance against any and all regulations to limit climate change pollution - a position viewed as extreme even by other global airline industry partners…” 

The letter urged United to “stop interfering with sub-national, national, regional, and global policy-making efforts aimed at reducing pollution from aviation” and to “support a global market-based measure in the International Civil Aviation Organization that requires a significant reduction in aviation greenhouse gas emissions, below current voluntary goals.”

“United should not support a sovereign airspace-based approach that would not account for emissions over international waters or any measure that would undermine the European Union Aviation Directive,” the petition said.

Reuters reported that United Airlines spokeswoman Megan McCarthy disputed the claims, pointing out that the airline is on a task force of the International Air Transport Association, an industry lobbying group seeking a global solution to airline emissions. "The entire industry got together to say that we supported a global approach rather than a regional approach," the news agency quoted McCarthy as saying.

Airlines for America (A4A) issued a statement saying that “the U.S. aviation industry supports a global sectoral approach to addressing emissions from airline operations, to be overseen by the United Nations’ body charged with setting standards and recommended practices for international aviation, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

“As noted last week, our member U.S. airlines supported the announced resolution which represents a historic commitment by the world's airlines to achieve carbon neutral growth from 2020 in partnership with governments, sending a strong message that it is moving forward with its commitments. This resolution offers governments across the world a proposed way forward working in partnership with the industry. The U.S. aviation industry has an exceptional environmental track record, and remains committed to further advancing their environmental stewardship. United’s announcement with AltAir Fuels last week is yet another example of this industry-wide commitment, as the renewable jet fuel is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent on a life cycle basis.

“The U.S. aviation industry could accomplish even more with NextGen, which is why we need realize the near-term benefits of it now. The airlines are ready and have already made significant investments that we want to see put to use for our customers, which has not been done to date. An FAA study found that flight delays and cancellations cost the U.S. more than $31 billion annually. NextGen will help reduce the cost and frustration of delays by enhancing capacity and allowing airlines and their customers to more efficiently move from point to point. NextGen will also further reduce aviation’s impact on the environment by decreasing fuel burn and CO₂ emissions by as much as 12 percent a year according to U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) -- the equivalent of taking 2.2 million cars off the road for a year.”

A4A spokesperson Victoria Day told Travel Pulse that the U.S. commercial aviation industry contributes just 2% of total Green House Gas (GHG) emission.  Day said that the industry increased fuel efficiency 120% between 1978 and 2011, eliminating 3.3B metric tons of CO2 (roughly the equivalent to taking 22M cars off the road each year).