iata international travel

What is the IATA Travel Pass and do I need it to travel?

Oct 26, 2021 • 5 min read

The IATA Travel Pass is one of a variety of “health credential” services © BlackCAT / Getty Images

For most international travel, you’ll have to provide proof of vaccination, a negative COVID-19 test or proof you’ve recovered from the virus in order to cross borders.

With many travelers and airlines looking for a simple way to store this information digitally, the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) Travel Pass health information checking service is being rolled out by more and more airlines, and so are its competitors like CommonPass and VeriFLY. They’re not vaccination passports, so what are they, how do they work, who’s behind them—and should you use them? 

What is the IATA Travel Pass? 

The IATA Travel Pass is one of a variety of “health credential” services that some airlines are using to help them check the validity of the proof you send them of your COVID-19 status—whether that’s your vaccination, a recent test, recovery from the disease, or a combination of all three.

Read more:  What is a vaccine passport and do I need one to travel?

It’s essentially an app on your phone where you take pictures of your vaccination records, a recent test or the proof you’ve recovered from COVID-19 within a certain time frame specified by the government of wherever you’re traveling to (and sometimes from). These are then checked and your airline is given either a green light or a red light for you to travel, according to the government travel rules of your destination country.

Dozens of airlines are trialling or using it—and other providers’ passes—to help them process your documentation, ideally well before you get to the airport. This helps them reduce queues and the cost of having staff members check your documents in person.

It’s different to the national or regional health pass wallets, like France’s TousAntiCovid , New York’s Excelsior Pass or the UK’s NHS COVID Pass . However, in the future, there may be links between them.

Other passes exist, with CommonPass and VeriFLY also in relatively wide use. Bear in mind that airlines may be trialling multiple pass options on different routes, so check any emails carefully and have a look at their website to confirm which you can use. 

How do they work?

You take pictures of your documentation or upload an existing picture, depending on the functionality of the various apps. This is then processed by the app provider’s staff—whether the IATA Travel Pass, CommonPass, VeriFLY or whatever—who confirm whether your documentation is valid.

It can be a bit of a logistical humdinger to need to take a picture of the everyday vaccination pass or test result that lives in one app on your phone with another app on your phone. Keeping paper copies of your vaccination certificates and test results can be very helpful, but in a pinch you can always find a friend to send them to, and then take a picture of their phone.

Once the processing is done, which usually is a matter of minutes or hours, you essentially get a green light that you’re good to go, or a red light that means you can’t travel until you’ve fixed a problem.

That might be because: you’re vaccinated with a vaccine not recognised in your destination; you sent in the wrong type of test (antigen not PCR, say); your test wasn’t taken recently enough (perhaps it was taken 49 hours before you are supposed to travel, but your destination requires it to be less than 48); or simply that they weren’t able to read your documents. 

Read more: PCR tests for travel: everything you need to know 

Do keep an eye out for this—getting another vaccination isn’t exactly a fixable problem, but getting another test might not be the end of the world.

Who runs these passes?

IATA’s travel pass is run by an airline trade industry group, the International Air Transport Association , which is sort of a Better Business Bureau for airlines. Remember, IATA is not a governmental or intergovernmental body, it’s an airline association.

CommonPass is run by a non-profit public trust with links to the World Economic Forum (sometimes referred to as Davos, after the location of its annual meeting) and the Rockefeller Foundation.  VeriFLY , meanwhile, is a product of biometric authentication software business Daon . Airlines are essentially outsourcing the verification to these apps, but in some cases, airlines are requesting that you upload the relevant information to them directly.

If you’re concerned about what happens to your data, that’s certainly a valid concern. As one example, British Airways uses VeriFLY for all flights into the UK. But its small print says: “The VeriFLY App is completely independent of British Airways and you are submitting your information directly to Daon (acting as the data controller), please check Daon’s privacy policy and terms and conditions.” However, it’s worth reading the fine print on VeriFLY to fully understand how your data will be used. 

Where will I use a travel pass, is it mandatory, and should I use it?

A growing number of airlines are using them, so you’re likely to be seeing them the next time you take an international flight. 

At present, they’re usually not fully required, but you can expect to receive multiple emails encouraging you to use them. You may also start seeing fast-track queues for people who have taken the time to enter their data. After all, it will take less time for an expert on these processes to check your documents remotely a day in advance than for a stressed check-in agent to try to figure out whether your vaccination certificate is valid or not.

So should you use it? Well, if you have privacy concerns, those seem valid—this technology has been developed pretty quickly, and it’s worth reading the privacy policies of the app should you have any reservations.

For more information on COVID-19 and travel, check out Lonely Planet's Health Hub .

Read more:  What is a vaccine passport and do I need one to travel? PCR tests for travel: everything you need to know What do I do if my flight gets cancelled - and can I get a refund?

Explore related stories

Destination Practicalities

Mar 28, 2023 • 3 min read

Here’s all you need to know about getting a traveler visa to visit China now that “zero COVID” has come and gone.

Sep 12, 2022 • 4 min read

Apr 30, 2024 • 6 min read

Apr 30, 2024 • 7 min read

Apr 30, 2024 • 4 min read

Apr 30, 2024 • 5 min read

Apr 30, 2024 • 3 min read

Apr 30, 2024 • 8 min read

Apr 30, 2024 • 13 min read

UN Tourism | Bringing the world closer

Unwto/iata destination tracker – easy travel.

The UNWTO/IATA Destination Tracker – Easy Travel is the first global dashboard on Air Travel Restrictions and Health-related Travel Requirements at the destination.

The first one-stop-shop for global information on COVID-19 related travel regulations it aims to build confidence among travellers and business and support policy making by providing a global overview of travel restrictions worldwide.

Available for free, it provides information and insights on the current status regarding air travel restrictions and measures in place at destinations worldwide.

The tracker includes data on:

• Countries with no COVID-19 related travel restrictions
• COVID-19 14-day notification rate per 100,000 population
• Test positivity rate
• People Vaccinated per 100
• Flight suspensions
• Entry restrictions
• Restriction level
• COVID-19 test
• Attractions
• Accommodation
• Food and Drinks
• Transit through the country
• Public transport
• Stay-at-home requirements
• Health Protocols
• Mask policies

The UNWTO/IATA Destination Tracker – Easy Travel Tracker is a collaborative initiative of both organisations using data provided by both parties, as well as other public sources such as Our World in Data and the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker.

IATA is an Affiliate Member of the World Tourism Organization.

Accelerate the easing of travel restrictions

IATA urged governments to accelerate the relaxation of travel restrictions as COVID-19 continues to evolve from the pandemic to endemic stage.

IATA called for:

• Removing all travel barriers (including quarantine and testing) for those fully vaccinated with a WHO-approved vaccine.
• Enabling quarantine-free travel for non-vaccinated travelers with a negative pre-departure antigen test result.
• Removing travel bans
• Accelerating the easing of travel restrictions in recognition that travelers pose no greater risk for COVID-19 spread than already exists in the general population.

“With the experience of the Omicron variant, there is mounting scientific evidence and opinion opposing the targeting of travelers with restrictions and country bans to control the spread of COVID-19. The measures have not worked. Today Omicron is present in all parts of the world. That’s why travel, with very few exceptions, does not increase the risk to general populations. The billions spent testing travelers would be far more effective if allocated to vaccine distribution or strengthening health care systems,” said Willie Walsh, IATA’s Director General.

A recently published study by Oxera and Edge Health demonstrated the extremely limited impact of travel restrictions on controlling the spread of Omicron. The study found that:

• If the United Kingdom’s extra measures with respect to Omicron had been in place from the beginning of November (prior to the identification of the variant), the peak of the Omicron wave would have been delayed by just five days with 3% fewer cases. 
• The absence of any testing measures for travelers would have seen the Omicron wave peak seven days earlier with an overall 8% increase in cases.
• Now that Omicron is highly prevalent in the United Kingdom, if all travel testing requirements were removed there would be no impact on Omicron case numbers or hospitalizations in the United Kingdom.

“While the study is specific to the UK, it is clear that travel restrictions in any part of the world have had little impact on the spread of COVID-19, including the Omicron variant. The United Kingdom, France and Switzerland have recognized this and are among the first to begin removing travel measures. More governments need to follow their lead. Accelerating the removal of travel restrictions will be a major step towards living with the virus,” said Walsh.

With respect to travel bans, last week, the WHO Emergency Committee confirmed their recommendation to “lift or ease international traffic bans as they do not provide added value and continue to contribute to the economic and social stress experienced by States. The failure of travel restrictions introduced after the detection and reporting of Omicron variant to limit international spread of Omicron demonstrates the ineffectiveness of such measures over time.” 

All indications point to COVID-19 becoming an endemic condition—one that humankind now has the tools (including vaccination and therapeutics) to live and travel with, bolstered by growing population immunity.

This aligns with the advice from public health experts to shift the policy focus from an individual’s health status towards policies focusing on population-wide protection. It is important that governments and the travel industry are well-prepared for the transition and ready to remove the burden of measures that disrupt travel.

“The current situation of travel restrictions is a mess. There is one problem—COVID-19. But there seem to be more unique solutions to managing travel and COVID-19 than there are countries to travel to. Indeed research from the Migration Policy Institute has counted more than 100,000 travel measures around the world that create complexity for passengers, airlines, and governments to manage. We have two years of experience to guide us on a simplified and coordinated path to normal travel when COVID-19 is endemic. That normality must recognize that travelers, with very few exceptions, will present no greater risk than exists in the general population. And that’s why travelers should not be subject to any greater restrictions than are applied to the general community,” said Walsh.

Mutually recognized policies on vaccination will be critical as we approach the endemic phase. Barrier-free travel is a potent incentive for vaccination. The sustainability of this incentive must not be compromised by vaccine policies that complicate travel or divert vaccine resources from where they can do the most good. Issues to address include:  

• Accepted vaccines : There is no universal recognition for all vaccines on the WHO Emergency Use list. This raises a barrier to travel as people have little choice on the range of vaccines available in their country.
• Validity : There is no alignment on the length of vaccine validity. This will become a barrier to travel as eligibility for boosters is controlled by national policies. Unduly short validity periods that effectively require air passengers to get regular booster jabs to travel internationally will consume resources that could support primary vaccination in the developing world and booster doses for the most vulnerable. It is reported that the WHO’s Chief Scientist called for booster doses to be used “to protect the most vulnerable, to protect those at highest risk of severe disease and dying. Those are […] elderly populations, immuno-compromised people with underlying conditions, but also healthcare workers.” 
• Distribution priorities : The calls of WHO and health experts for vaccine equity are not universally prioritized. Only half the states in Africa have been able to vaccinate more than 10% of their populations while many developed countries are reducing vaccination validity and considering second rounds of boosters. This creates a barrier to travel and strains testing resources in parts of the world where vaccine distribution is less advanced.

“Urgent consideration is needed for several critical concerns regarding vaccines. While Europe is aligning around a nine-month validity period for primary vaccinations, this is not universal. And booster shot validity has not been addressed. As the first quarter of the year is key to bookings for the peak-northern summer travel season, it is important to provide certainty to potential travelers as early as possible. Governments have declared intentions to support a travel recovery. Addressing questions on vaccination validity is a key element,” said Walsh.

In October, the Ministerial Declaration of the ICAO High-level Conference on COVID-19 called for “one vision for aviation recovery.” IATA followed-up by publishing From Restart to Recovery in November. It is a blueprint for reconnecting the world following key principles of simplicity, predictability, and practicality. 

“The over-reaction of many governments to Omicron proved the blueprint’s key point—the need for simple, predictable, and practical means of living with the virus that don’t constantly default to de-connecting the world. We have seen that targeting disproportionate measures at travelers has economic and social costs but very limited public health benefits. We must aim at a future where international travel faces no greater restriction than visiting a shop, attending a public gathering or riding the bus,” said Walsh.

The successful rollout of the IATA Travel Pass continues with a growing number of  airlines already using it in daily operations to support the validation of health credentials for travel. 

“Whatever the rules are for vaccination requirements, the industry will be able to manage them with digital solutions, the leader of which is the IATA Travel Pass. It’s a matured solution being implemented across a growing number of global networks,” said Walsh.

Credit | iStock

You may also be interested in....

• New guidance for handling mobility aids
• IATA cooperates to bring aviation benefits to Somalia
• Revised aviation standards benefit the industry
• Improving passenger demand hit by Omicron
• Cargo continues to send strong signals
• UK slots decision out of touch with reality

Corendon Airlines first in Europe with IATA Travel Pass

Following the conclusion of successful IATA Travel Pass trials in November 2021, Corendon Airlines announced that it will implement the app on select flights across its network.

Passenger traffic improves before Omicron strikes

The recovery in air travel continued in November 2021, prior to the emergence of the Omicron variant of the COVID virus. International demand sustained its steady upward trend as more markets reopened. Domestic traffic, however, weakened, largely owing...

Supply chain disruptions stall cargo growth

Data for global air cargo markets reveals slower growth in November 2021. Supply chain disruptions and capacity constraints affected demand despite economic conditions remaining favorable for the sector.

View the discussion thread.

• Active topics
• Latest aviation news
• Airline experiences and trip reports
• Civil aviation / General aviation
• Military aviation
• Plane spotting forums
• Website related
• Manufacturers
• Trip reports
• Organisations
• IATA - International Air Transport Association

IATA: International travel drives May 2022 air traffic recovery

Note: We have returned to year-on-year traffic comparisons, instead of comparisons with the 2019 period, unless otherwise noted. Owing to the low traffic base in 2021, some markets will show very high year-on-year growth rates, even if the size of these markets is still significantly smaller than they were in 2019.

• Total traffic in May 2022 (measured in revenue passenger kilometres or RPKs) was up 83.1% compared to May 2021, largely driven by the strong recovery in international traffic. Global traffic is now at 68.7% of pre-crisis levels.
• Domestic traffic for May 2022 was up 0.2% compared to the year-ago period. Significant improvements in many markets were masked by a 73.2% year-on-year decline in the Chinese domestic market due to COVID-19-related restrictions. May 2022 domestic traffic was 76.7% of May 2019.
• International traffic rose 325.8% versus May 2021. The easing of travel restrictions in most parts of Asia is accelerating the recovery of international travel. May 2022 international RPKs reached 64.1% of May 2019 levels.

“ The travel recovery continues to gather momentum. People need to travel. And when governments remove COVID-19 restrictions, they do. Many major international route areas – including within Europe, and the Middle East-North America routes – are already exceeding pre-COVID-19 levels. Completely removing all COVID-19 restrictions is the way forward, with Australia being the latest to do so this week. The major exception to the optimism of this rebound in travel is China, which saw a dramatic 73.2% fall in domestic travel compared to the previous year. Its continuing zero-COVID policy is out-of-step with the rest of the world and it shows in the dramatically slower recovery of China-related travel, ” said Willie Walsh, IATA’s Director General.

1) % of industry RPKs in 2021    2) Year on year change in load factor    3) Load Factor Level

International Passenger Markets

European carriers’ May traffic rose 412.3% versus May 2021. Capacity rose 221.3%, and load factor climbed 30.1 percentage points to 80.6%. The impact of the war in Ukraine remained limited to areas directly impacted.

Asia-Pacific airlines had a 453.3% rise in May traffic compared to May 2021. This is significantly higher than the 295.3% year-on-year gain registered in April 2022. Capacity rose 118.8% and the load factor was up 43.6 percentage points to 72.1%. Improvements in the region are being driven by reduced restrictions in most of the region’s markets, except China.

Middle Eastern airlines’ traffic rose 317.2% in May compared to May 2021. May capacity rose 115.7% versus the year-ago period, and load factor climbed 37.1 percentage points to 76.8%. The progressive re-opening of Asian markets is boosting traffic through Gulf hubs.

North American carriers experienced a 203.4% traffic rise in May versus the 2021 period. Capacity rose 101.1%, and load factor climbed 27.1 percentage points to 80.3%. With most restrictions removed for travellers from this region, tourism and a high willingness to travel continue to foster the international recovery as several other route areas are now outperforming 2019 results.

Latin American airlines’ May traffic rose 180.5% compared to the same month in 2021. May capacity rose 135.3% and load factor increased 13.5 percentage points to 83.4%, which was the highest load factor among the regions for the 20th consecutive month. Some routes, including those from Central America to Europe and to North America, are outperforming 2019 levels.

African airlines had a 134.9% rise in May RPKs versus a year ago. May 2022 capacity was up 78.5% and load factor climbed 16.4 percentage points to 68.4%, the lowest among regions.

Domestic Passenger Markets

1) % of industry RPKs in 2021    2) Year-on-year change in load factor    3) Load Factor Level

India’s domestic RPKs rose 405.7% year-on-year in May, compared to the 78.6% increase recorded in April. In May 2021, India experienced the country’s most severe COVID-19 outbreak.

US domestic traffic was up 26.1% in May, compared to May 2021.

2022 vs 2019

The strong results in most international and domestic markets compared to a year ago is helping passenger demand catch up to 2019 levels. Total RPKs in May 2022 reached 68.7% of May 2019 levels, which was the best performance against pre-COVID-19 travel so far this year.

Air Passenger Market overview – May 2022 vs the same month in 2019

The bottom line.

“ The recovery in travel markets is no less than impressive. As we accelerate towards the peak summer season in the Northern Hemisphere, strains in the system are appearing in some European and North American hubs. Nobody wants to see passengers suffering from delays or cancellations. But passengers can be confident that solutions are being urgently implemented. Airlines, airports and governments are working together, however, standing up the workforce needed to meet growing demand will take time and require patience in the few locations where the bottlenecks are the most severe.

In the longer term, governments must improve their understanding of how aviation operates and work more closely with airports and airlines. Having created so much uncertainty with knee-jerk COVID-19 policy flip-flops and avoiding most opportunities to work in unison based on global standards, their actions did little to enable a smooth ramping-up of activity. And it is unacceptable that the industry is now facing a potential punitive regulatory deluge as several governments fill their post-COVID-19 regulatory calendars. Aviation has delivered its best when governments and industry work together to agree and implement global standards. That axiom is as true post-COVID-19 as it was in the century before, ” said Walsh.

Read the latest Passenger Market Analysis (pdf)

Press Release No 36,Geneva – 7 July 2022

Related articles, related articles more from author.

IATA Ground Handling Conference 2024 to focus on sustainability

Partnering for a better Planet: IATA Ground Handling Conference 2024

IATA: Air cargo demand maintains double-digit growth in February

Leave a reply.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Sign me up for the daily newsletter. We protect your data, read our privacy policy .

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Aviation24.be latest

Eurostar commits to 100% renewable energy for trains by 2030, london luton airport and wizz air introduce quieter, fuel-efficient aircraft, norwegian launches base at riga airport, expanding european operations, norwegian launches direct flights to palma de mallorca from stockholm skavsta airport, ryanair marks 3 million passengers milestone at béziers airport with launch of summer 2024 programme, aviation24.be trending, brussels airlines reports €58 million loss in 1q 2024, including €14 million due to strikes, 24-hr strike announced for 2 may at brussels south charleroi airport, lufthansa confirms rough landing of boeing 747-8i training flight at los angeles airport, japan airlines flight cancelled as captain gets drunk at u.s. hotel, finnair flight from chicago to helsinki diverts to new york jfk after engine problems.

• Cookies policy
• Privacy policy

• Search Menu
• Advance articles
• Browse content in Biological, Health, and Medical Sciences
• Administration Of Health Services, Education, and Research
• Agricultural Sciences
• Allied Health Professions
• Anesthesiology
• Anthropology
• Anthropology (Biological, Health, and Medical Sciences)
• Applied Biological Sciences
• Biochemistry
• Biophysics and Computational Biology (Biological, Health, and Medical Sciences)
• Biostatistics
• Cell Biology
• Dermatology
• Developmental Biology
• Environmental Sciences (Biological, Health, and Medical Sciences)
• Immunology and Inflammation
• Internal Medicine
• Medical Sciences
• Medical Microbiology
• Microbiology
• Neuroscience
• Obstetrics and Gynecology
• Ophthalmology
• Pharmacology
• Physical Medicine
• Plant Biology
• Population Biology
• Psychological and Cognitive Sciences (Biological, Health, and Medical Sciences)
• Public Health and Epidemiology
• Radiation Oncology
• Rehabilitation
• Sustainability Science (Biological, Health, and Medical Sciences)
• Systems Biology
• Browse content in Physical Sciences and Engineering
• Aerospace Engineering
• Applied Mathematics
• Applied Physical Sciences
• Bioengineering
• Biophysics and Computational Biology (Physical Sciences and Engineering)
• Chemical Engineering
• Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Computer Sciences
• Computer Science and Engineering
• Earth Resources Engineering
• Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
• Electric Power and Energy Systems Engineering
• Electronics, Communications and Information Systems Engineering
• Engineering
• Environmental Sciences (Physical Sciences and Engineering)
• Materials Engineering
• Mathematics
• Mechanical Engineering
• Sustainability Science (Physical Sciences and Engineering)
• Browse content in Social and Political Sciences
• Anthropology (Social and Political Sciences)
• Economic Sciences
• Environmental Sciences (Social and Political Sciences)
• Political Sciences
• Psychological and Cognitive Sciences (Social and Political Sciences)
• Social Sciences
• Sustainability Science (Social and Political Sciences)
• Author guidelines
• Submission site
• Open access policy
• Self-archiving policy
• Why submit to PNAS Nexus
• The PNAS portfolio
• For reviewers
• About PNAS Nexus
• About National Academy of Sciences
• Editorial Board
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

Article Contents

Introduction, conclusions, materials and methods, acknowledgments, supplementary material, author contributions, data availability, astronomy’s climate emissions: global travel to scientific meetings in 2019.

Competing Interest: The authors declare no competing interest.

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Andrea Gokus, Knud Jahnke, Paul M Woods, Vanessa A Moss, Volker Ossenkopf-Okada, Elena Sacchi, Adam R H Stevens, Leonard Burtscher, Cenk Kayhan, Hannah Dalgleish, Victoria Grinberg, Travis A Rector, Jan Rybizki, Jacob White, Astronomy’s climate emissions: Global travel to scientific meetings in 2019, PNAS Nexus , Volume 3, Issue 5, May 2024, pgae143, https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae143

• Permissions Icon Permissions

Travel to academic conferences—where international flights are the norm—is responsible for a sizeable fraction of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with academic work. In order to provide a benchmark for comparison with other fields, as well as for future reduction strategies and assessments, we estimate the CO 2 -equivalent emissions for conference travel in the field of astronomy for the prepandemic year 2019. The GHG emission of the international astronomical community’s 362 conferences and schools in 2019 amounted to 42,500 tCO 2 e, assuming a radiative-forcing index factor of 1.95 for air travel. This equates to an average of 1.0 ± 0.6 tCO 2 e per participant per meeting. The total travel distance adds up to roughly 1.5 Astronomical Units, that is, 1.5 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. We present scenarios for the reduction of this value, for instance with virtual conferencing or hub models, while still prioritizing the benefits conferences bring to the scientific community.

The climate crisis is the biggest challenge of our lifetime, and systemic changes are needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Professional travel, especially international flights, accounts for a significant portion of the carbon footprint of academia. In our study, we take a look at air travel from scientific astronomy meetings, held in the prepandemic year 2019, to obtain quantitative information from the international astronomical community that can be used to set realistic targets for the necessary emission reduction. We explore alternative scenarios for meetings, which lower the amount of air travel, and thereby the carbon footprint of the scientific community, but still include or even increase the benefit of meetings for international collaboration.

There is unequivocal scientific evidence that the current climate change on Earth is caused by the emission of anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs), dominated by CO 2 and CH 4 ( 1 ). Global warming leads to an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events including droughts, flooding, and (large) wildfires—and adds extreme costs and health risks to humans ( 2 ). In order to limit the effects of the accelerating climate crisis for life on Earth, it is imperative to drastically reduce the emission of GHGs. Most GHG emissions are associated with fossil fuel use, ∼16% of the global GHG are from the transport sector, due to mostly running on fossil fuels. With all effects included, aviation contributes 7% to the global human-made climate forcing across all sectors, with 2–3% of this directly from CO 2 warming ( 3 , 4 ), the rest from other effects, which include mechanisms driven by airplane-created oxides of nitrogen, soot, oxidized sulfur species, and water vapor. The latter contribution creates an impact through contrails that act similar to high cirrus clouds, which have a net warming effect by trapping the Earth’s thermal infrared radiation ( 5 ). Aviation is hence one of the major drivers of global climate change, both in the transport sector but also globally a ( 6 ).

Travel in academia is common practice. Researchers benefit from networking with their colleagues during meetings ( 7 ), and a correlation of the visibility of a scientist with their amount of air travel seems to exist ( 8 ). However, in light of the climate crisis, researchers, particularly working in the field of medicine, ecology, biology, and astronomy, have started to critically assess their own travel behavior by calculating GHG emissions related to individual, large, annual meetings ( 9–15 ). In general, air travel to conferences makes up the largest contribution of GHG emissions to a meeting by far ( 14 , 15 ). Some studies also compare how the carbon footprint of a recurring meeting evolved over time ( 16–18 ), or how an in-person conference compares to a virtual one ( 19 ). For a more comprehensive overlook, we refer the interested reader to the recently released book titled “Academic Flying and the Means of Communication” ( 20 ), which presents studies connected to academic travel extending beyond conference attendance and discusses how to decarbonize the travel culture within academia.

The academic research field of astronomy and astrophysics is an international discipline. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) counts close to 12,000 active members (with a historical peak of ∼14,000 members in 2020) from ∼90 nations. b The American Astronomical Society (AAS) has 7,000 members, of which more than 700 reside in almost 60 countries outside the United States ( 21 ). A study ( 22 ) estimates a total number of ∼30,000 professional researchers in astronomy and astrophysics, including graduate students. Historically, due to this widespread distribution, the need for data collection from remote observatories, as well as scientific exchange, astronomy developed a strong dependence on international travel. Reasons for travel include observing at telescopes, project meetings, research visits, the installation of new instruments and telescopes, and the dissemination of knowledge and learning at conferences, workshops, schools and outreach events. The large majority of the distances traveled by astronomers is related to the attendance of conferences, workshops, and other meetings ( 23 ).

While geographically diverse, astronomy research is a comparatively small community. Globally, ∼8 million researchers work in different fields of science, c meaning astronomers make up a fraction of <1% of the world’s scientists. Nonetheless, numbers for France ( 23 ) position astronomy as the science discipline with the largest travel climate impact per researcher. This travel comes at a cost aside from the obvious financial one: a substantial immediate emission of GHGs.

However, these travel emissions are not the sole source of astronomy’s carbon footprint. In recent years, a number of studies calculated the emissions for different aspects of astronomy, providing quantitative information for GHG emissions of specific elements of the community. These studies provided reasonable estimates for GHG emissions within the Australian astronomy community ( 24 ), the Dutch astronomy community ( 25 ), research institutes ( 26 , 27 ), space missions ( 22 ) as well as ground-based observatories ( 22 , 28–32 ), and conducted representative calculations of colocated and online conferences ( 33 ). These data revealed work-related mean emissions per researcher and year that, depending on the country and institute, range between 4.7 tCO 2 e ( 25 ) and 41.8 tCO 2 e ( 24 ), all of which are beyond what is sustainable for the field of astronomy, and incompatible with any emission limits necessary to fulfil the Paris Agreement d ( 34 ).

As a next step for the assessment of astronomy-related GHG emissions and to form a basis for reduction measures, we quantitatively evaluate a significant source of emissions: those related to travel to astronomy conferences and schools. We take stock of globally all major astronomy meetings for the prepandemic year 2019 as an “old normal” baseline, and investigate where these meetings take place, where participants come from, and what the financial, time, and climate costs are. We also consider how this impacts both equity and sustainability responsibilities in the field. While we discuss potential measures and approaches to reduce or eliminate flight-related GHGs of astronomy, we do not purport to immediately “solve” the issues identified, as this is a task requiring input from the whole community. We have conducted this study primarily to contribute a quantitative dataset on astronomy travel, which can be used to subsequently derive reduction needs, options, and potential focus points of action. While concretely assessing the field of astronomy, the findings can be mapped onto any other scientific fields with similar structure regarding conferences and schools — this study is in principle investigating fundamental structures of science as a whole. As part of our discussion, we also briefly address how changing some of our conference habits might have potential for improved equity and inclusivity in the field of astronomy.

We compiled a dataset of 362 meetings (conferences and schools) that took place around the globe between January 1 and December 31, 2019, and were open to attend by anyone in the astronomical community. We compute an amount of 42,500 tCO 2 e for the total travel to those 362 scientific astronomy meetings in 2019. Substantial research makes us confident that the derived list of meetings is (as near as can be) complete. Hence, this study represents the whole of global astronomy. Closed-door collaboration meetings were not considered for this study, as they are hard to assess from the outside—they require a future study of their own. The process of compiling the meeting list is described in the Materials and methods section of this paper. Among the open meetings, we were able to retrieve information about the number of participants and their associated home institutions for exactly 300. The remaining 62, for which we could obtain only incomplete data, are incorporated into overall numbers with statistical arguments later in the paper.

We found that astronomy meetings fall into two broad categories, which we refer to as “conferences” and “schools.” Conferences are predominantly aimed at the entire astronomical community, with the primary purpose of conveying scientific findings and a delivery of presentations as talks or posters. Schools are usually aimed at students or early-career scientists, and content is mainly presented in the form of lectures, some including hands-on activities. Of the 300 meetings that we obtained a complete dataset for, we counted 258 conferences and 42 schools. Based on these data, we estimate the travel-related carbon footprint for each meeting individually, and then combine all meetings to assess the climate impact of astronomy’s prepandemic meeting habits.

The locations of all 300 meetings are shown on the map in Fig. 1 , with conferences indicated by circles and schools by squares. In addition to the geographical information, we include the meeting’s total carbon footprint by the size of the marker, and the average carbon footprint per participant via the color-scale. e For these 300 meetings, we find that the total amount of GHG emissions is 38,040 tCO 2 e, and the added-up traveled distance is equivalent to ∼5,650 times the circumference of the Earth, or ∼1.5 Astronomical Units, i.e. the distance from Earth to the Sun. Other studies which assessed single, large conferences, obtain similar or even higher values for the average travel-related GHG emissions per meeting participants ( 9–11 , 13 , 35 ). The resulting distribution of the mean travel emissions per participant for conferences and schools are shown in Fig. 2 , with an additional distinction based on the continent of a conference venue. The statistical properties are listed in Table 1 .

Distribution of all 2019 astronomy/astrophysics meetings around the globe. Conferences are shown as circles and schools are shown as squares. The size of each marker corresponds to the overall amount of GHG emissions related to travel to each meeting, while the color-scale indicates the mean emission per participant for each meeting. A darker shade implies a higher carbon footprint per person, which is related to travel over larger distances.

Stacked distribution of the mean travel emissions per participant for conferences (panel A) and schools (panel B) on different continents. The stacking order is set by the number of meetings per continent from large to small, i.e. Europe–North America–Asia–Oceania–South America–Africa for conferences, and Europe–Asia–North America–Oceania–South America–Africa for schools.

Statistics of evaluated emissions for 258 astronomy/astrophysics conferences and 42 astronomy/astrophysics schools in 2019, listing global numbers and statistics for each continent.

From left to right: total number of meetings—accumulated travel route for all meetings—total amount of travel-related CO 2 e emission—average number of participants per meeting—average travel-related carbon emissions per meeting—the mean fraction of local attendees. Uncertainties correspond to the standard deviation, except for the number of conference participants at European, North- and Central American, and all worldwide conferences, for which we give the upper and lower 68% uncertainty as those follow a positively skewed log-normal distribution. We consider a participant to be local if the round-trip to the meeting location is ≤200 km. Note that we could only analyze a very little amount of schools with venues in Africa, Oceania, and South America, and therefore no statistical conclusions can be drawn for those continents.

Mean travel emissions

The mean, global round-trip travel emission to a single conference (see Table 1 ) is 1.1 ± 0.6 tCO 2 e per participant—for context, in 2019 the average per-capita carbon footprint in a developed country was 9.5 tCO 2 e, while in, e.g. Africa, it was 1.2 tCO 2 e ( 36 ). In order to keep the climate warming below 2 °C, the worldwide average needs to be below 3.3 tCO 2 e by 2030 ( 37 ). The mean emissions per participant and meeting vary slightly depending on the geographic location of meetings. For conferences, the highest and lowest mean emissions per participant are attributed to meetings taking place on the continents of Africa and South America, respectively, but the number of meetings that took place in these regions was small. Meetings in Europe are likely to have a slightly lower carbon footprint in terms of mean per-person travel emissions, as journeys of a Eurocentric audience are shorter compared to North America and Asia, and longer distances can be traveled by train compared to, e.g. the United States. Interestingly, European meetings tend to have the second-lowest participation by local participants, even though these meetings have the second-lowest mean emissions.

Compared to conferences, schools have a lower carbon footprint, which is 0.7 ± 0.4 tCO 2 e per participant. Schools in Asia appear to have slightly more local participants and produce fewer GHG emissions on average than similar meetings in Europe and North America. The carbon footprint of European schools is lower than that of European conferences, while for meetings in North America, schools and conferences are very similar in terms of average travel emissions per participant. For the other regions, we could only obtain data for one school in Africa, two in Oceania, and three in South America, which does not allow us to draw any conclusions for these locations due to insufficient statistics.

Three meetings exceeded average travel emissions of 3.0 tCO 2 e per person, and all of them took place in Australia. Because Oceania is geographically disadvantaged by being far from many established centers of astronomical research, and thus from where the bulk of astronomers travel from, international meetings held there tend to have higher mean travel emissions per participant. In addition, two of these meetings had no local participants, as the conferences took place in remote locations.

We considered a participant to be a local if the round-trip to the meeting location is ≤ 200 km. It is shown in Fig. 3 that meetings with a higher fraction of locals have significantly lower mean emissions per participant than meetings with few locals. However, the distribution of the carbon footprint per participant as a function of localness scatters significantly in the range between 0 and 35% of local participants, indicating that a small number of local participants does not necessarily imply high average travel emissions. This scattering is observed for meetings on all continents. However, as air travel emissions scale with distance, small mean emissions per participant correspond to institutions of origin that are on average not too far away. As we discuss later, minimizing the total distance traveled is a good approach to reducing conference emissions.

Localness vs. mean travel emissions per participants for the conferences. Different symbols indicate the continent on which a meeting took place.

Meeting sizes

The number of participants for the 258 analyzed conferences varies over two orders of magnitude, with a majority of the number of participants being in the range of 128 − 86 + 33 for conferences. Four of them counted more than 700 participants, namely the 233rd and 234th AAS meetings, the joint meeting between the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) and the Division of Planetary Science within the AAS, and the annual European Astronomical Society (EAS) meeting. The 233rd AAS meeting was the largest conference with 3,396 participants. The mean number of participants at schools is significantly lower with an average of 54 ± 27 participants. Figure 4 shows, for all meetings, the number of participants vs. the average CO 2 e emissions per participant, and shows that the mean travel emission per participant is independent of the size of a meeting. Among the four meetings with more than 700 participants, all of them were aimed particularly at the American and European Astronomy communities (233rd and 234th AAS meeting, EAS meeting, and a joint meeting of both the American and European planetary science division of the AAS and EPSC).

Illustration of participant numbers vs. the CO 2 e emission per participant. Different symbols indicate the continent on which a meeting took place.

Meeting locations

We visualize where meetings take place and where participants travel from in Fig. 5 (see also Table S1 for total numbers of conferences and schools hosted in different countries). We find that nearly half (47.2%) of all meetings take place in Europe, and roughly a fifth of the meetings take place in North America f (21.7%) and Asia (20.4%), respectively. The remaining meetings are distributed between Oceania (7%), South America (2.3%), and Africa (1.3%). The distribution in terms of meeting participation for the home institutes looks somewhat similar with European-based astronomers being the largest group (42.1%), followed by their North American-based colleagues (31.2%). We find that about a fifth of all meeting attendees originate from institutes in Asia (18.3%), while the remaining ∼10% is distributed among Oceania (3.5%), Central and South America g (3.4%), and Africa (1.7%). If we compare the numbers of participants with the IAU member statistics, h we find that our distribution for meeting participants approximately matches the IAU member distribution for Europe, Africa, and Oceania. The fraction of IAU members at Asian institutions is higher than that seen participating in meetings, as is the case for astronomers located at Central and South American institutes. It is possible that our compiled meeting list lacks some local events organized for these communities in particular. The fraction of attendees from North America is significantly higher than in the IAU membership statistics. Since we track (anonymized) conference attendances and not individuals, this difference may be an indication that astronomers from North American institutes participate in more meetings than the average. It also might be a reflection of low IAU membership numbers in North America (e.g. because membership as part of just the AAS is preferred). We also note that the IAU membership requires a PhD and therefore, those statistics exclude undergraduate and graduate students, who are also taking part at conferences, and make up the majority of participants at schools. Due to the intentional anonymization during our data collection process a further data-driven analysis, e.g. regarding career status, gender, or other characteristics is not possible.

Geographical distribution of the meeting venues by continent for the 300 meetings with complete participant data (outer ring), and geographical distribution of the home institutions of all participants (inner ring). With regard to meeting venues and participants, Europe and North America dominate both distributions. Note: Individual scientists will be counted multiple times if participating in multiple meetings.

Figure 6 illustrates the location of the home institutions of conference and school participants in more detail. We scale the size of the circles by the number of trips taken from each location. It is expected that this correlates to the amount of scientists working at an institute in this region. The color-coding indicates the emissions per conference travel averaged over all trips from that location. It can be seen that the most trips are taken from locations in Europe and the east coast of the United States. The amount of trips originating from China, Japan, and Australia are comparable to those from the west coast of the United States. As with the meeting venues, we see the effect that researchers in Europe profit from the on-average smaller distances allowing for more trips at a lower CO 2 e emission, while researchers from South Africa, Hawai’i, Japan, or Australia have little chance to reduce their carbon footprint when participating in in-person international meetings.

Global distribution of travel origins of conference and school participants (panel A). The area of the circles at each location represents the number of trips taken from there. A color scale gives the average CO 2 e intensity of individual trips per location. Zooms to Europe and North America with rescaled symbols are shown in panels B and C for better visibility.

Assessment of emissions from meetings without participant information

To estimate the missing emissions from the 62 meetings for which we could not retrieve any data on the home institutions of participants, we use the average emissions per participant and continent, which we derived from the other meetings. Depending on whether we find information on the number of participants, e.g. number of people in the group picture of the meeting, or the number of names listed in a program, we use either those, or estimate the number of participants by the topic and venue of the meeting. For the remaining meetings that do not show any indication for number of participants, we take the average number of participants per continent as listed in Table 1 . From this, we derive an additional amount of 4,519 ± 353 tCO 2 e, with 4154 ± 349 tCO 2 e resulting from conferences, and 365 ± 50 tCO 2 e from schools. For an estimate of the uncertainty, we take into account the derived standard deviations of the average emission per participant and continent. The continent-specific numbers for conferences and schools are listed in Table 2 , and the details for all meetings without data on participants’ home institutes are given in Tables S3 and S4 for the conferences and schools, respectively. In total, we calculate travel emissions of 42,559 ± 353 tCO 2 e due to identified meetings in astronomy and astrophysics in 2019. Here, the uncertainty of ∼1% reflects the overall uncertainty in the number of participants and their travel origins. In the ‘Systematic uncertainties’ section, we discuss how, e.g. the choice of radiative-forcing index (RFI) might be adapted for different further uses of this number. With this in mind, we round the calculated travel emissions to 42,500 tCO 2 e.

Statistics for estimated emissions for 49 astronomy/astrophysics conferences and 13 astronomy/astrophysics schools in 2019, for which full participant data were not available.

If the number of participants could not be estimated via, e.g. the conference photo, we assigned a meeting the continental mean value presented in Table 1 . To compute the total CO 2 e emissions, we use the continent-specific mean emission per capita. The uncertainties on the total CO 2 e emissions have been derived via standard error propagation, and were derived individually for the continent-specific locations and the entire worldwide sample.

At large, researchers across all fields are concerned about the worsening climate crisis, and the willingness to reduce GHG emissions exists among academic staff ( 38 ). Here, we want to address different options that will allow to reduce the travel-related carbon footprint of scientific meetings in order to give incentives for future meeting planning. We want to point out that carbon offsets, albeit seeming like an easy solution to claim a net reduction of GHG emissions, are no alternative to reduce travel emissions, e.g. ( 39–41 ). This discussion is led by the assumption that the frequency and size of meetings represents the fundamental communication needs of the field—so, we do not propose to simply stop having meetings, as such. While, to some degree, a fraction of conferences could probably be canceled without overall loss of communication, this is likely not a feasible solution as a whole. Instead, we discuss options for both reducing climate emissions for in-person meetings, as well as possibilities for hybrid or fully online meetings (see also Ref. ( 42 )). Such a shift in our way of communication will have to be carried by the community: from the will to optimize meeting locations, to consider new advances in technology for hybrid meetings and immersive online options, and to reevaluate the “career prestige” of organizing or participating in any given meeting format.

Traditionally, conference organizers set a location for their conference based on (i) where they themselves are situated, (ii) a particular destination’s benefits (retreat-based conferences), (iii) a set rotation (e.g. AAS meetings; national astronomy meetings), and/or (iv) exotic locations, typically vacation spots, that are chosen to encourage spending some time there before or after the meeting. The origin of travel for most conference participants is rarely known precisely in advance of setting the conference location, particularly for general conferences that cover a variety of astronomical topics. However, for collaboration-based meetings or subject-specific meetings, one often knows in advance where the majority of participants will travel from. This a priori knowledge could be utilized to reduce conference-based emissions significantly, or alternatively expressions of interest in a conference could be sourced from the community prior to selecting a physical location.

Taking for example the meeting which resulted in the highest emissions per participant in 2019, a conference based in the tropical Australian village of Palm Cove, QLD, attracted 115 participants, of which 105 traveled from outside Australia, generating ∼461 tCO 2 e. Holding this meeting in mainland Europe (e.g. Heidelberg, Germany) or northeastern United States (e.g. Washington, DC) could have reduced the CO 2 e emissions by more than half. Of course, there are a number of reasons that might motivate hosting a conference in such a location: first of all, many regions in the world will always be geographically disadvantaged regarding the main global concentrations of astronomy research, i.e. Europe and North America (e.g. Fig. 6 ), and it benefits the international community to increase access to knowledge dissemination and interaction beyond established hubs of astronomers. Scenic attractions and cultural immersion can be utilized as an additional incentive for researchers to embark on long trips to distant locations, while bringing economic benefits to local communities. Such reasons noted, we urge that in these times of strong necessity to contain the climate crisis, more attention should be paid to the environmental impact of travel when choosing a conference location, weighing up the costs against the benefits and ensuring that decisions about in-person formats can be justified. One should also take into consideration the modes and duration of travel, and look for opportunities to lengthen or increase the value of a trip that may otherwise be quite high in carbon cost.

In general, long-distance travel contributes considerably to the climate crisis ( 43 ). Following the classification of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), i we can identify four categories of journeys, depending on the length of flight time: short-haul (SH; 3 h or less), medium-haul (3–6 h), long-haul (LH; 6–16 h) and ultra-long-haul (more than 16 h). Given that a 3-h flight covers more distance than the longest train journey we assumed (1,000 km), we consider all train journeys to be SH journeys, too, even though the actual travel time is more than 3 h. We note that while the classification is solely based on the duration of the flights, air travel requires an additional time commitment for travel to the airport, security procedures, and arrival at the gate 30 min or more prior to the departure of a flight. Depending on the rail network, train travel can therefore be of similar duration as the total amount of time necessary to travel SH. Details on the assumptions for different continents are given in the section on calculating CO 2 e emissions in the ‘Materials and methods’ section.

Comparing all trips to the 300 meetings, split into these three categories (combining LH and ULH), to the CO 2 e emissions reveals that LH flights make up more than 60% of emissions, while only accounting for 21% of all trips (see Fig. S2 ). This comes as no surprise, but strengthens the argument for different meeting concepts, c.f., ( 44–46 ) in order to mitigate travel-related emissions. We emphasize that minimizing the GHG emissions should become a more prevalent factor in determining where any meeting should be held. Furthermore, we note that the appropriate meeting format should be chosen upon critical consideration, based on the needs and expected outcomes of a given meeting.

Alternative meeting concepts

Instead of the traditional meeting concept of gathering physically in just one place, we consider three alternatives to estimate the potential for saving travel-related CO 2 e emissions: hubs, where participants travel to the nearest of several locations that are connected virtually; hybrid meetings, which involve an in-person component and a virtual-attendance component, ideally on equitable footing; and online-only meetings where all activities, social events included, are hosted virtually. Such alternative meeting formats can make long-distance flights unnecessary, which significantly contribute to a meeting’s climate impact.

We want to quantitatively consider the transformation of a single-venue meeting to a hub model. For example, the 233rd AAS meeting in Seattle, WA (USA)—the largest astronomy-related conference in 2019 with 3,396 participants—generated 3,462 tCO 2 e. If located more centrally, however (e.g. Minneapolis, MN), the meeting would have generated 2,615 tCO 2 e—25% less. Alternatively, we can consider 2, 3, and 4 hub locations, with each participant traveling to the nearest hub:

2-hub model. We divide the 48 US mainland states into east and west, with the north–south dividing line close to Dallas, TX. Western participants meet in Los Angeles, CA, eastern participants in Baltimore, MD. The western contingent expends 692 tCO 2 e, the eastern 685 tCO 2 e. Combined emissions decrease by 60% compared to everyone traveling to Seattle.

3-hub model. This scenario adds a European hub to the existing Los Angeles and Baltimore hubs, reducing the impact of the Baltimore hub to 483 tCO 2 e. A hub in Amsterdam (Rome) would contribute 27 (53) tCO 2 e, bringing the meeting total to 1,201 (1,228) tCO 2 e. This third meeting hub would bring about a total reduction of ∼65% in emissions.

4-hub model. A far-Eastern hub in Tokyo (Beijing) would generate 68 (60) tCO 2 e from nearby participants (including Australia), and the emissions associated with the Los Angeles hub would drop from 692 to 472 tCO 2 e. The total meeting emissions would be roughly 1,060 tCO 2 e, resulting in an overall reduction of 70%.

From this illustration, it is clear that the hub model for conferences can bring significant reductions in emissions due to travel, although we should note that the biannual AAS conference is not a typical astronomy meeting and therefore the extent of the reductions delivered by a hub model may also not be typical. Moreover, the AAS meeting location rotates around the United States every 6 months in order to visit different constituencies, with Seattle being one of those location. Other venues were located more centrally (e.g. Denver, CO), but some very remotely (e.g. Honolulu, HI). There are other considerations for the hub model, alongside the obvious increase in expenditure by hosting the meeting in multiple physical locations. For example, each subsequent hub serves a smaller fraction of attendees and therefore also isolates them increasingly. Because the research fields in astronomy are not defined by location (in contrast to, e.g. geologists or field biologists who might study a phenomenon in a specific region) the hub concept might not necessarily bring together people who work on similar research topics, and therefore can further enhance the impact of intrinsic geographical disadvantage. A rotation of hub locations could support regularly mixing of the pool of attendees such that networking does not become stale. For national meetings, part of the draw might be to bring an entire country’s researchers together at once, in which case a hub model might not be appropriate, but one could look at other strategies for emissions reduction (e.g. meeting every 2 years instead of annually). The illustration shows, however, that in certain circumstances even a single additional meeting location (the 2-hub model) can bring about a substantial reduction in emissions, and it might be suitable to consider for large meetings, e.g. the AAS meetings, which are not highly specialized conferences, but attract a big crowd of researchers, such that enough opportunities for networking are given.

The adoption of a hybrid in-person/online model can bring further carbon reductions. Previous studies ( 11 , 14 , 33 , 35 , 44 , 47 , 48 ) have shown that hybrid meetings drastically reduce emissions and virtual meetings reduce the amount of emissions by more than 99% compared to in-person meetings. Three AAS meetings in 2020–2021 were held virtually out of necessity (COVID-19 pandemic), so it is certainly feasible for the AAS to adopt the virtual model. The January 2022 meeting was due to be held physically in Salt Lake City, UT with limited online presence, but was canceled at short notice. The June 2022 meeting took place as an in-person meeting in Pasadena, CA, but the January 2023 meeting in Seattle was offered as a hybrid meeting. If we consider the Seattle meeting from January 2019 as an analog to the January 2023 meeting, and assume that those based in the contiguous United States, Alaska, and Canada had attended in person, while the remainder (including Hawai’i) joined the meeting virtually, the emissions total comes to 2,881 tCO 2 e, which corresponds to a saving of 581 tCO 2 e (∼17%). This reduction is a somewhat sizeable amount illustrating an initial potential for organizers to decrease astronomy’s impact on the climate by adapting hybrid concepts. However, in order to reach the goal of net-zero emissions by 2045 and assuming a linear trend of reductions, decarbonization by ≥ 5% per year is necessary, which means that a hybrid model can only provide the needed decrease in GHG emissions for roughly 3 years, unless the fraction of virtual participation continues to increase. Still, in order to adapt and transform our way of conferencing, hybrid meetings might be a valuable step on the way, if they are implemented successfully such that researchers experience them as good choices for meeting participation. Currently, hybrid participation enables the attendance of (keynote) talks and digital access to posters, and networking among virtual and in-person participants is rarely supported, which disincentivizes people from attending a meeting remotely ( 49 ). By making better hybrid options available in the future, online attendees will become less disadvantaged, and more people would likely elect to attend online, thus leading to more significant reductions of emissions via hybrid formats.

Environment and equity

While travel has been a regular expected activity for many astronomers in recent decades, it is important to recognize that the requirement to travel for research creates a barrier to participation for many, which disproportionately affects scientists belonging to minority groups ( 50–52 ). Funding is harder to obtain for those based in the less wealthy and less-renowned institutes; time is hard to acquire for people with caring responsibilities (predominantly women); and visas can be a hurdle financially, temporally, and politically, depending on one’s citizenship. And as many in the literature have discussed, virtual events can be just as successful as in-person ones through the appropriate use of modern and constantly improving technology and formats, e.g. ( 44 , 53–59 ). Here, we want to elaborate briefly on access barriers created by in-person meetings.

A major factor that decides participation at an event is the financial cost. About 70% of all meetings take place in Europe and North America. About 86% of the North American meetings take place in the United States. While the costs for a meeting depend on location, venue, and meeting type, prices across Western Europe, the US, and Canada are approximately the same. Meeting organizers charge a broad range of registration fees, from ∼200 to 950 € (∼220 to 1,050 USD j ), with the mid-to-low range being more common. Hotel prices also vary depending on location, ranging from 50 to 200 € (55 to 220 USD) per night. International flights between Europe and North America range roughly from 700 € to 1,000 € (770 to 1,100 USD) for a return ticket, while the price of traveling from or to other parts of the world is generally considerably more expensive. Domestic return flights in the US k and airfares in Europe l cost ∼200–350 € (∼220–380 USD) on average in 2021/2022. While in the US, train travel is rarely a feasible mainstream means of transport, it is more common in Europe, and a few connections exist that are reasonable replacements for flights (e.g. London–Paris, Paris–Amsterdam, Berlin–Warsaw, Munich–Budapest, Zurich–Milan m ). However, train ticket prices are often more expensive than airfare. For example, the airfare of a 500 km journey within Italy is about a third cheaper than a train ticket ( 60 ), while more broadly within Europe the same distance is ∼2.5 times cheaper. For journeys in Europe exceeding 1,000 km the ratio of train ticket prices to plane tickets is ∼1.5. m Altogether, the price for a 5-day meeting in the Eurocentric/North American context, without meal costs, can range from ∼500 € (550 USD) to over ∼ 3,000 € (∼ 3,300 USD), depending travel distance and price of conference fee and accommodation. For other regions requiring longer distance travel, these estimates are likely to be lower limits.

Hence, in-person participation is largely dependent on available funding, while the distribution of money for work-related travel varies significantly by country, between institutions, and often even within institutes, where senior researchers are known to travel significantly more than early-career researchers ( 24 ). Certain research facilities and regions are strongly disadvantaged when attempting to take part in in-person scientific meetings simply due to the high cost of travel. Since a large number of 2019 astronomy meetings took place in Europe or North America, researchers in these regions have, in general, the advantage to attend in-person meetings at a lower cost. The privilege of being a researcher in a more advantaged country can also be seen clearly when correlating meeting attendance with Human Development Index (HDI), which seeks to measure human development based on metrics of health, knowledge and standard of living. n Figure 7 shows a scatter plot of the number of 2019 astronomy conference attendees from a given country (normalized by population) as a function of HDI. There, the total carbon emissions for each country, created by traveling to conferences, is expressed by the colorscale and the size of the marker, while countries which did not have any attendees in our dataset are shown at the bottom as circles beneath the dashed line. A clear correlation is seen between conference participation and the development state of a country, such that countries with higher HDI have many more attendees at in-person astronomy conferences. At the same time, researchers in these same high-HDI countries produce more GHG emissions through travel, and contribute proportionally more to the carbon footprint of astronomy. It is also worth noting that 81 countries were missing from the 2019 conference attendee population, meaning that many countries are excluded entirely from in-person conference participation. The average HDI of countries which did feature in our dataset is 0.77 ± 0.14, while the average HDI of those which did not is 0.66 ± 0.14, which supports the notion that countries with less development (and thus, less privilege) are consequently less able to send participants to in-person meetings.

Comparison of the HDI of each country of origin for conference participants with the total conference attendees from that country, normalized by population. The color scale and size of the markers show the total amount of GHG travel emissions of all participants for each country. Circles below the dashed line represent the distribution of the HDI for countries with no attendance at astronomy/astrophysics meetings in 2019.

Another access barrier to in-person meetings, which can be invisible to researchers with travel-privileged nationalities, is the need for long and complicated visa processes. Researchers from Asia and Africa encounter visa-related obstacles for work-related travel far more often than their colleagues from North America or Europe ( 61 ). Political decisions such as travel bans for citizens of specific countries and month-long waiting times for visa interviews can actively exclude researchers from attending in-person meetings, as well as disadvantage them ( 62 ). At least, this is true for a model where in-person meetings are the only option for participating in essential career-advancing academic networking, e.g. ( 63–65 ). With the shift to virtual meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic, data could be gathered on how the attendance at international meetings changed with regard to diversity. While, in general, a significant increase in participant numbers occurred, e.g. ( 66 ), researchers from many more countries, particularly in the global South, registered for the virtual meetings compared to the same major conferences that were held prior to the pandemic ( 67 ). In addition, the participation of some underrepresented minorities (Hispanics and people with African heritage) slightly increased.

The struggle to balance work and care-taking responsibilities is not unique to academia, but a well-known problem for any family. To climb up the academic career ladder is a competitive undertaking, and experience in an international environment is one of the key aspects that is highly valued by universities ( 68 , 69 ). Both male and female researchers are affected by the complex problem of combining a career in science with a family life, resulting in having fewer children than desired ( 70 ). In general, the mobility of researchers is lowest at the peak of childbearing age, independent of gender ( 71 ). However, mobility to (international) conferences that take place in person seems to be linked to gender, generally disfavoring women, which can in parts be attributed to caring responsibilities ( 72–75 ). Efforts exist to counter-balance this effect in order to facilitate participation at meetings for people with child-caring responsibilities ( 76 ); however, a favorable family-friendly option can be to attend meetings virtually, such that time away from home is minimized. This will be particularly true if meetings that take place in online or hybrid formats maintain their full effectiveness compared with traditional in-person formats, and as such emphasizes the criticality of avoiding those who attend meetings online being disadvantaged in terms of the benefits offered.

To attend an in-person meeting, one often requires a certain level of physical ability to be able to travel to and partake in a conference. Reference ( 77 ) describes in detail the obstacles that a researcher with a physical disability must overcome. The accessibility of a meeting is often not considered during planning, and even if organizers take into account how to make participation easier for disabled researchers, the often much higher attendance costs for them—e.g. due to special transport, personal assistance by an accompanying person—require additional financial support. In the literature, several suggestions and guidelines exist on how to organize in-person meetings that are more accessible ( 77–80 ). Virtual meetings have the advantages of a great reduction in costs and a schedule that does not demand time or energy in exhausting travel. It is especially important when it comes to accessibility at conferences that those who are impacted are consulted and included in the designing and enacting of suitable solutions.

When considering the cumulative impacts of accessibility and inclusivity in academic meetings, it is worth noting that true systematic change in terms of increased diversity at meetings—even when shifting to more accessible formats such as online and hybrid—is unlikely to happen in the short period of a few years. Instead, it will require the commitment of a community in the long term to positive change, via actively removing (and keeping removed) barriers of access.

A path forward to more sustainable and inclusive meetings

Ideally, the reduction of GHG emissions from travel to scientific meetings is conducted such that the quality of research is not impacted. Meetings are beneficial for collaboration and travel to in-person meetings has been found to increase visibility ( 8 ); however, it has only a limited effect on success ( 81 ), and it can also reduce an individual’s productivity ( 82 ). A straightforward way of cutting emissions therefore could just be reducing the number of meetings, e.g. organizing recurring annual meetings only every other year. This could also have other benefits such as more available time for research, teaching, or mentoring. In addition, it would impose less pressure to be away from home for the sake of visibility for researchers with families, which is a phenomenon that female scientists encounter more often than their male colleagues, e.g. ( 75 ).

As humans, we find it easiest to network in person, but by solely relying on in-person meetings, certain groups of people can be excluded from the global science community. In order to allow for both an in-person experience as well as accessibility, an approach could be a hybrid format in which the visibility and networking opportunities for online attendants are prioritized. For large meetings, a hub format including virtual participation could be considered. While it adds an additional effort on organizing committees to establish well-working concepts, we recommend avoiding a “reinventation of the wheel” and instead taking advantage of already existing resources (see, e.g. ( 83 )). In addition, it is worth changing the concept of a conference when we transition into a virtual meeting space, especially for a global event with participants from different time zones. Even though online meetings are capable of reducing the barriers we mentioned earlier, they are still perceived as less effective for networking and social opportunities ( 84 ). Hence, to foster more collaboration and enable new connections, the emphasis should lie on active rather than passive participation, as well as asynchronous schedules to accomodate for different time zones, e.g. ( 45 , 85–87 ). An example for a successful recurring online meeting is “Cosmology from Home,” which has been implemented as a virtual conference in 2020 and never went back to the in-person format. In the future, the advance of technology could even enable hosting both conferences and schools in virtual reality ( 44 , 88 , 89 ). However, additional skills are necessary to handle the associated hardware and software, compared to simply attending an online meeting via online video conferencing tools, e.g. Zoom or Google Hangouts or Meet. “Astronomers for Planet Earth” has published “A statement on Conferences and Meetings” o that establishes criteria that should be taken into account for the organization of meetings in order to steer toward a sustainable future.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the research community to abruptly change their habit of in-person meetings into virtual ones. While this rapid transition has not given us enough time to perfect online meetings, there are many lessons we can learn from that time, and we as the science community should consider planning future meetings with a much larger concern for sustainability, accessibility, and inclusivity. Our analysis of in-person astronomy meetings in 2019 finds that the total amount of GHG emission related to travel to open astronomy and astrophysics meetings is 42,500 tCO 2 e. The average carbon footprint for travel to a conference is 1.1 ± 0.6 tCO 2 e per attendee, and 0.7 ± 0.4 tCO 2 e per person for travel to a school. Since academic staff is willing to reduce GHG emissions, it is necessary that universities and research institutions incentivize the shift toward more sustainable practices with regard to long-distance travel, e.g. by removing barriers that currently exist for rail travel. Currently, no net-zero aviation technology is available, and it will not be possible anytime soon. The amount of sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) comprised less than 0.1% of the total fuel consumed in 2019, with the production costs currently being the limiting factor for wider usage ( 90 ). Hence, reducing the amount of flights is the most obvious solution to reducing travel-related GHG emissions for the foreseeable future. We address this appeal particularly to senior researchers who, on average, have been found to form the most frequently traveling group ( 23 , 24 , 91 ).

While purely online meetings have the advantage of drastically decreasing the carbon footprint of an event, we acknowledge that despite newly arising formats this might not be the most suitable option for all meetings. Other approaches can include: reducing travel by hosting a hub-conference, hybrid meetings where the needs of online participants are put first, simply optimizing the meeting location based on the origin of its participants, or a combination of these. We recognize the logistical challenges that appear for such alternative formats, such as dealing with multiple time zones and the need for more local organizers, but we deem them worthwhile impactful endeavors in the face of the intensifying climate crisis. In addition to making the field of astronomy— and others—more sustainable, these efforts will also create a more accessible and inclusive research community.

Experimental design

The goal of this study was to gather data that permit both a qualitative and quantitative analysis of astronomy’s conferencing-related travel climate impact. This required a set of astronomy meetings taking place in 2019 that is as complete as possible, as well as inferred travel data for each meeting, such as a list of conference participants and their origin of travel. For the origin of travel, we assume that travelers conduct a return journey from their home institute (i.e. their primary affiliation at the time). We acknowledge that some medium—to long-distance travelers might have combined several conferences or institute visits into one long-distance trip, but since we do not track individuals, we do not account for this in our calculations.

Meeting sources and collected data

As stated above, the target meetings are “open call” astronomy meetings, that is, meetings that are not restricted to the membership of a particular project or collaboration and have thus been publicly advertised. We define “astronomy meetings” as meetings primarily involving professional astronomers and students in the area of studies relating to “photon-based astronomy.” As a consequence, we excluded meetings predominantly geared toward Solar System planetary science, pure astroparticle physics, theoretical physics, and meetings with a wide topical coverage, where core astronomy or astrophysics topics covered only a small fraction of the meeting. The boundaries for including or excluding certain meetings are somewhat open to interpretation, but the above description of inclusion criteria defines our selection function well enough to be potentially reapplied to similar assessments in future years.

The most prominent collection of international astronomy meeting announcements is maintained by the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC) , p from which we selected meetings that were held in the 2019 calendar year. After an online search for other resources, we included further meetings from Exoplanet.eu , q the two AAS annual meetings, r the EAS annual meeting, and collections of meetings from other communities, e.g. the Indian Institute of Astrophysics s and the Astronomical Society of Australia. t After applying the stated selection criteria and removal of two predatory conferences, as well as a few that had been canceled, this resulted in a total of 362 meetings. To put the number of meetings for 2019 in context to the number of meetings in previous years, we compare those numbers for meetings announced on the websites of the CADC and Exoplanet.eu . We find that in 2019 the number of meetings is on average ∼20% higher than for those announced in the years 2011 through 2018. Partially, this is also due to the significant increase in exoplanet meetings, for which ∼53 were announced on average from 2011 to 2018, but 84 in 2019.

For each of these meetings we searched the meeting websites for lists of participants, which record the number of attendees, as well as the city and country of the primary affiliation of each attendee, i.e. the city we assumed as the travel origin. Where participant lists were not publicly available, we contacted the organizers to ask for an anonymized list, which disclosed at most the affiliation for each participant, or at least the state or country for said affiliation. We obtained data for participants origins for 258 conferences and 42 schools. Where we did not have access to such a list and did not manage to get in contact with the organizers, we attempted to estimate an approximate number of participants from, e.g. conference reports or conference photos. For these cases we did not record cities of travel origin, but instead multiplied the number of participants by the continent-averaged per-capita emission value from Table 1 to get the footprint of the meeting — see Table 2 . For cases where we could not even retrieve the number of participants, we assigned these meetings the continent-averaged number of participants, and multiplied this number by the continent-averaged per-capita emission value from Table 1 to get an estimate for the footprint of the meeting. We list the 49 conferences and 13 schools in Tables S3 and S4 and discuss the impact of these assumptions below.

We would like to stress that we explicitly did not trace people or institutions in this process. Any participant data was immediately converted to city and country of work and only city and country information were used in any analysis. We did not aggregate information of individual participants or institutions across meetings, nor did we, at any point, associate emission information with individuals. Our interest in this analysis did not lie in individual behavior, or even the behavior of specific subdisciplines of astronomy, but in information on the “meeting sociology” of the joint astronomical community.

Conferences and schools

Astronomy meetings seem to fall into two broad categories, that is conferences and schools. Usually, conferences are aimed at the entire astronomical community, with the primary purpose of presenting and discussing scientific findings in talks or posters. Schools are held for the purpose of training or educating students or early-career scientists in a specific topic or skill. Content is usually delivered in the form of lectures, workshops, hackathons, or other hands-on practices. Our meeting sample consists of 258 conferences with complete participation data, 49 conferences without complete data, 42 schools with complete participation data and 13 without complete data. We note that we assigned some meetings labeled as “workshop” to the conference category when their program revealed that the format was more conference- than school-like, i.e. mainly consisting of talks presenting results or methods.

Calculation of CO 2 -equivalent emission for journeys

The major outcome of our collection of participant origin data is an estimate of climate-relevant emissions for all travels to each conference. Since no further data on routes, travel modes, travel companies, travel classes, or airplane models are available, we made some simplifying assumptions. We discuss the potential impact of these in the ‘Statistical analysis’ section below.

The tool we used to calculate emissions is the “Travel Carbon Footprint Calculator” by Barret ( 92 ). This online calculator simplifies travel to a direct route between origin and destination, using the geolocation of the two places. It differentiates trips into train and flight trips. In order to account for deviations from Great Circle distances, a multiplication factor of 1.35 is applied by the tool to all land-bound travel routes. As a simplification we treat all ground travel as train rides, ignoring the higher emissions of cars. In this way, we will slightly underestimate the CO 2 e emissions. However, as conference attendance by car involving a drive of more than ∼300 km is typically rare and the main emissions stem from medium- to long-distance flights anyway, this will hardly impact the overall picture.

The default maximum distance traveled by train can be set in steps between 0 km (i.e. not considering train travel at all), 100, 300, 500, 700, and 1,000 km. We selected the threshold values according to assumed traveler behavior based on national or continental location. For instance, in mainland Europe, where the rail network is generally good, we generally assumed that for journeys of < 500 km, travelers would take the train. Similarly, in North America, where the driving culture is strong and the train network is generally poor, we assumed that travelers would drive journeys of < 300 km (but with emissions equivalent to that of trains over the same distance) and aeroplanes otherwise. However, in countries with excellent long-distance rail connections such as China and Japan, we assumed a much larger threshold (700 or 1,000 km). For meetings held on islands (e.g. Sicily), participants were assumed to fly if they originated from further than the approximate size of the island, even if this distance was within the typical distance threshold for the nation. For example, a trip from Rome to Palermo would be classed as a flight, despite the distance falling under the typical threshold of 500 km. However, the journey Catania–Palermo (∼200 km) would be classified as a train journey.

To get an estimate on how much our choice of train-traveled distance influences the calculations, we calculated CO 2 -equivalent emissions with both the choice below and the choice above for our picked distances traveled by train, for 36 of the 300 meetings, e.g. for meetings that we set the maximum distance to 300 km, we compute also the emissions for 100 and 500 km, etc. We find that the emissions vary, on average, by 1.7 %. In 3 out of 71 alternative calculations, the emissions differed between 10 and 20%. Hence, we conclude that our derived carbon footprint for 300 astronomy meetings is reasonably well constrained.

The carbon intensity of “train” trips in the tool is assumed to be 23 gCO 2 e km −1 per person, which is representative for French trains. “Flight” trips are modeled by a selection of different flight emission models. These differ in the way they include radiative forcings from the noncarbon effects of flights at high altitude, e.g. contrails and cloud creation. The details are described in the calculator paper ( 92 ) and on the webpage. u All three default models that we use in combination (ADEME, myclimate, DEFRA) consider direct emission by aircraft fuel burning as well as upstream emissions for fuel productions. v We note that we used the calculator from July 2021 to December 2022 with the at-that-time emission factors. Similar to all models implemented in emission calculators, neither model includes the in-comparison negligible emissions from the construction of airplanes ( 93 ), nor emissions arising from airport infrastructure, which would add ∼4–7% of emissions over the lifecycle of a plane ( 94 ). The “RFI” for the combined three models used is 1.9–2.0, which corresponds to an equivalent to ∼165 gCO 2 e per passenger per kilometer for long-distance flights. There are data supporting higher RFIs: 2.6 or even 3.0 ( 6 , 95 ). For an RFI of 3, our calculated carbon footprint for each meeting would increase by a factor of 1.5. Consequently, our estimates on climate impact are conservatively low—but could be easily corrected for different model parameters if needed.

For this study, GHG emissions related to train travel are computed based on the typical value for French trains. However, all countries have a different energy mix, and some might produce electricity with fossil fuels, or even run trains with diesel. In addition, land-bound travel in the US is considered to be done via train while only few regions are well connected by rail and short distances are therefore traveled by car. We can roughly estimate the impact of the simplified approach on the results: in total, ground-based travel makes up roughly 3,536,000 km w (taking into account the multiplication factor of 1.35 that accounts for detours of the land routes), which is 1.6% of the total distance traveled. Applying the emission factor of 23 gCO 2 e km −1 per passenger, this yields about 81 tCO 2 e for all ground-based travel combined, contributing 0.2% to the travel emissions of 38,040 tCO 2 e (excluding meetings for which we lacked participant information). Using the upper limit for the range of GHG contributions through train travel, x which is 88.39 gCO 2 e km −1 per passenger, the ground-based travel emissions would rise up to 313 tCO 2 e, which is equivalent to 0.8% of all emissions, and would add a maximum of 232 tCO 2 e to the overall GHG emissions. Hence, assumptions for train travel are mostly of second-order importance. We note that other factors, such as the average passenger load as well as the chosen travel class, have an influence on the carbon footprint of each journey, especially for air travel (e.g. flying Business class is associated with higher emissions by a factor of ∼ 2 ( 96 )). Because we are not able to obtain such detailed information for our study, we assume that all flights were done in Economy class and with 100% occupancy. Therefore, our results are likely a modest underestimation.

Statistical analysis

In terms of data collection, there is no complete source of astronomy meetings in a given year. The total number of meetings (362) is therefore a lower limit. As noted above, 62 meetings did not have available participant lists, and of the 300 meetings with participant lists, ∼10% were somewhat incomplete (i.e. affiliations were not available or not retrievable for some participants, meaning that cities or countries of origin had to be assumed). Of course, travel is not the only source of GHG emissions connected with academic meetings in astronomy. Venues themselves often have large carbon footprints; and accommodation is usually required for the meeting participants. We discuss some quantities related to accommodation in the Supplementary material , but since they are substantially subdominant we do not include accommodation (or venue-specific emissions) in our quantitative estimates presented above.

Systematic uncertainties

Given the defined reproducible methodology for CO 2 e-emissions, the absolute value of these emissions depends on the chosen RFI value (1.95 in this work) and the simplification of direct routes between travel origin and destination, as well as air travel classes. The RFI encodes the knowledge uncertainty and model-dependencies of indirect effects of aviation and fuel burning at altitude. The RFI is simply a parameter that could be updated when it is better quantified. Depending on how these emissions numbers shall be further used, either the parameters in CO 2 e-calculation can remain fixed—maybe for comparisons with subsequent years—or the RFI and/or direct-flight assumptions can be modified (e.g. for comparison with absolute values of other emission sources). Including a more complex calculation using intermediate stops for long-distance flights instead of great-circle distances will only add a small amount. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports a 10% difference for actual vs. great circle-routes ( 97 ).

This means that the numbers we are presenting are both a slight underestimate, as well as dependent on the choice of RFI. However, it will depend on the goal for what this number is supposed to be used; whether these dependencies are really a systematic uncertainty or just a result of a specific choice of parameters. For the use as a reference year of conference travel the emissions calculated here are a robust baseline for future comparisons.

“Updated analysis of the non-CO 2 effects of aviation” by the EU Aviation Safety Agency: https://climate.ec.europa.eu/news-your-voice/news/updated-analysis-non-co2-effects-aviation-2020-11-24_en

IAU Member statistics: https://www.iau.org/public/themes/member_statistics/

UNESCO science report: https://en.unesco.org/unesco_science_report/figures

United Nations Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat—The Paris Agreement: https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement

Emission numbers assume RFI of 1.9–2.0 for air travel, see ‘Materials and methods’ for details.

Including the Caribbean, where one meeting was held in 2019.

Note that no meetings in our analysis were hosted in Central America in 2019

https://www.iau.org/administration/membership/individual/distribution/ ; IAU members per continent: Africa: 2.2%; Asia: 22.3%; Europe: 42.9%; North America: 24.9%; Oceania: 3%; Central and South America: 4.7%

Air Transport and Travel Industry—IATA EDIFACT AND XML CODESET: https://standards.atlassian.net/wiki/download/attachments/607420437/IATA%20Code%20set%20Directory.pdf

Assuming 1 € = 1.1 USD

Annual US Domestic Average Itinerary Fare in Current and Constant Dollars—Bureau of Transportation Statistics: https://www.bts.gov/content/annual-us-domestic-average-itinerary-fare-current-and-constant-dollars

Average passenger fare of selected airlines in Europe in 2021—Statista: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1125265/average-ticket-price-selected-airlines-europe/

Data visualizations by Deutsche Welle. What’s the real cost of travel?—Tom Wills: https://github.com/dw-data/travel-cost

UNDP Human Development Reports—Human Development Index: https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/human-development-index#/indicies/HDI

https://astronomersforplanet.earth/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/A4E-Statement-on-Events-and-Meetings.pdf

CADC—International Astronomy Meetings: https://www.cadc-ccda.hia-iha.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/en/meetings/

Exoplanet.eu—Meetings: https://exoplanet.eu/meetings/past/

AAS—Meeting Archive: https://aas.org/meetings/past-meetings

IIA—Events: https://www.iiap.res.in/?q=events/meetings

ASA—Events Calendar: https://asa.astronomy.org.au/events/calendar

https://travel-footprint-calculator.irap.omp.eu

ADEME: “Documentation des facteurs d’émissions de la Base Carbone” via https://base-empreinte.ademe.fr/documentation/base-carbone ; myclimate: https://www.myclimate.org/en/information/about-myclimate/downloads/flight-emission-calculator ; DEFRA: https://www.carbonkit.net/categories/DEFRA_journey_based_flight_methodology

We only take into account data processed with the “Travel Carbon Footprint Calculator” as we have no knowledge about travel routes for meetings for which we lacked participant information.

https://www.iea.org/energy-system/transport/rail

The authors want to thank the referees for asking helpful, in-depth questions and making constructive suggestions allowing us to improve the manuscript. In addition, the authors would like to thank atmosfair gGmbH for providing hotel emission data, S.M. Wagner for providing helpful comments that improved the manuscript, S. Falkner for the support in analyzing the data with Panda DataFrames, and D. Barret for background information on the IRAP carbon footprint calculator. Furthermore, the authors would like to thank the people who aided in data collection and without whom this paper would not have been possible: R. Akeson, I. Aleman, J. Alves, E. Audit, M. Baaz, J. Babu, C. Bailer-Jones, V. Beckmann, M. Bedell, O. Beltramo-Martin, M. Boquien, S. Borgani, R. Bouwens, S. Cantalupo, M. Cantiello, P.R. Capelo, L. Carone, A. Cattaneo, A. Chhabra, Y.-H. Chu, L. Colangeli, F.M. Concetto Belfiore, M. Cunningham, B. Czerny, E. da Cunha, R.I. Dawson, N. Degenaar, O. Demircan, R. Drimmel, E. Feigelson, A. Finoguenov, S. Geier, R. Gill, M. Gillon, J. Girard, A. Goodman, T. Greene, J. Greiner, R. Gupta, C. Heyward, D. Hogg, J. Holder, C. Jäger, T. Jackson, A. Jardin-Blicq, L. Jiang, D. Jones, H. Kimura, H. Klahr, J. Kneller, P. Koch, S. Kravchuk, B. Müller, A. Macciò, I. Mandel, N. Manset, I. McCarthy, M. McClure, S. Mei, S. Mullally, J. Murthy, R. Neuhäuser, L. Nittler, E. O’Leary, S. O’Toole, C.N. Ofodum, R. Overzier, Z. Papadaki, M. Podolak, S. Portegies-Zwart, F. Rieger, H.-W. Rix, G. Rudnick, P. Saha, S. Saha, S. Sam, T. Sawala, R. Schödel, N. Schartel, R. Schoenrich, E. Sellentin, P. Sharma, B. Soonthornthum, A. Spagna, M. Steinmetz, J. Stevens, P. Strøm, L. Summerer, H. Tananbaum, T. Treu, T. Trifonov, W. Vieser, L. Wang, A. Wang, B. Wehbe, W.W. Weiss, R. Wesson, J. Wild, C. Willott, F. Wyrowski, S. Xu, J. Zhang, P. Zhou, A. Zmija, and L. Zschaechner.

Supplementary material is available at PNAS Nexus online.

The authors declare no funding.

A.G. and K.J. conceptualized the idea behind this investigation and wrote the majority of the manuscript. K.J., A.G., P.M.W., V.A.M., V.O.-O., E.S., A.R.H.S., H.D., C.K., T.A.R., J.W. contributed toward the data collection, sanity checking of the data, analysis and visualization. L.B., V.G., and J.R. were involved in discussions.

Our calculated data files computed with the “Travel Carbon Footprint Calculator” and a demonstration of the data analysis are available on Github at https://github.com/agokus/travel-emissions .

Eyring   V , et al.    2021 . Human influence on the climate system . Vol. 423 . Cambridge, UK and New York (NY) : Cambridge University Press .

Google Scholar

Google Preview

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) . 2023 . Weather and climate extreme events in a changing climate . Cambridge, UK and New York (NY) : Cambridge University Press . p. 1513 – 1766 .

International Air Transport Association (IATA) . 2019 . Climate change and carbon offsetting and reduction scheme for international aviation (CORSIA) report .

International Energy Agency (IEA) . 2020 . Tracking transport 2020, international energy agency tracking transport report 2020 .

Avila   D , Sherry   L , Thompson   T . 2019 . Reducing global warming by airline contrail avoidance: a case study of annual benefits for the contiguous United States . TRIP . 2 : 100033 .

Lee   D , et al.    2021 . The contribution of global aviation to anthropogenic climate forcing for 2000 to 2018 . Atmos Environ . 244 : 117834 .

Oester   S , Cigliano   JA , Hind-Ozan   EJ , Parsons   ECM . 2017 . Why conferences matter—an illustration from the international marine conservation congress . Front Mar Sci . 4 : 257 .

Berné   O , et al.    2022 . The carbon footprint of scientific visibility . Environ Res Lett . 17 ( 12 ): 124008 .

Callister   MEJ , Griffiths   MJD . 2007 . The carbon footprint of the American Thoracic Society meeting . Am J Resp Crit Care . 175 ( 4 ): 417 .

Yakar   D , Kwee   TC . 2020 . Carbon footprint of the RSNA annual meeting . Eur J Radiol . 125 : 108869 .

Bousema   T , et al.    2020 . Reducing the carbon footprint of academic conferences: the example of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene . Am J Trop Med Hyg . 103 ( 5 ): 1758 .

Passalacqua   A . 2021 . The carbon footprint of a scientific community: a survey of the historians of mobility and their normalized yet abundant reliance on air travel . J Transp Hist . 42 ( 1 ): 121 .

Wortzel   JR , et al.    2021 . Estimation of the carbon footprint associated with attendees of the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting . JAMA Netw Open . 4 ( 1 ): e2035641 .

Periyasamy   AG , Singh   A , Ravindra   K . 2022 . Carbon emissions from virtual and physical modes of conference and prospects for carbon neutrality: an analysis from India . Air Soil Water Res . 15 : 11786221221093298 .

McClintic   SM , Stashevsky   AG . 2023 . Assessing strategies to reduce the carbon footprint of the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology . JAMA Ophthalmol . 141 ( 9 ): 862 .

Ponette-González   AG , Byrnes   JE . 2011 . Sustainable science? Reducing the carbon impact of scientific mega-meetings . EBL . 2 : 65 .

Jäckle   S . 2019 . We have to change! The carbon footprint of ECPR general conferences and ways to reduce it . Eur Polit Sci . 18 : 630 .

Milford   K , et al.    2021 . Medical conferences in the era of environmental conscientiousness and a global health crisis: the carbon footprint of presenter flights to pre-covid pediatric urology conferences and a consideration of future options . J Pediatr Surg . 56 ( 8 ): 1312 .

West   CE , Hunter   DG . 2022 . Carbon footprint of the 2021 and 2022 AAPOS annual meetings . J AAPOS . 26 ( 5 ): 255 .

Kristian Bjørkdahl   ASFD , editor. 2022 . Academic flying and the means of communication . Singapore : Palgrave Macmillan .

American Astronomical Society (AAS) . 2021 . American Astronomical Society annual report 2020 .

Knödlseder   J , et al.    2022 . Estimate of the carbon footprint of astronomical research infrastructures . Nat Astron . 6 : 503 .

Blanchard   M . 2022 . Concerned yet polluting: a survey on French research personnel and climate change . PLOS Climate . 1 ( 9 ): e0000070 .

Stevens   ARH , Bellstedt   S , Elahi   PJ , Murphy   MT . 2020 . The imperative to reduce carbon emissions in astronomy . Nat Astron . 4 : 843 .

van der Tak   F , et al.    2021 . The carbon footprint of astronomy research in the Netherlands . Nat Astron . 5 : 1195 .

Jahnke   K , et al.    2020 . An astronomical institute’s perspective on meeting the challenges of the climate crisis . Nat Astron . 4 : 812 .

Martin   P , et al.    2022 . A comprehensive assessment of the carbon footprint of an astronomical institute . Nat Astron . 6 : 1219 .

Flagey   N , Thronas   K , Petric   A , Withington   K , Seidel   MJ . 2020 . Measuring carbon emissions at the Canada–France–Hawaii telescope . Nat Astron . 4 : 816 .

Flagey   N , Thronas   K , Petric   AO , Withington   K , Seidel   MJ . 2021 . Estimating carbon emissions at CFHT: a first step toward a more sustainable observatory . JATIS . 7 : 017001 .

European Southern Observatory (ESO) . 2021 . European Southern Observatory annual report 2020 .

Aujoux   C , Kotera   K , Blanchard   O . 2021 . Estimating the carbon footprint of the GRAND project, a multi-decade astrophysics experiment . Astropart Phys . 131 : 102587 .

McCann   KL , Nance   C , Sebastian   G , Walawender   J . 2022 . A path to net-zero carbon emissions at the W. M. Keck observatory . Nat Astron . 6 : 1223 .

Burtscher   L , et al.    2020 . The carbon footprint of large astronomy meetings . Nat Astron . 4 : 823 .

German Advisory Council on the Environment . 2020 . Using the CO 2 budget to meet the Paris climate targets. Environmental Report 2020, Chap. 2 .

Klöwer   M , Hopkins   D , Allen   M , Higham   J . 2020 . An analysis of ways to decarbonize conference travel after COVID-19 . Nature . 583 : 356 .

Pathak   M . 2022 . Technical summary. In: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) , editors. Climate change 2022: mitigation of climate change. contribution of working group III to the sixth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change . Cambridge University Press . p. 51 – 148 .

Le Quéré   C , et al.    2018 . Global carbon budget 2018 . Earth Syst Sci Data . 10 ( 4 ): 2141 .

Thaller   A , Schreuer   A , Posch   A . 2021 . Flying high in academia—willingness of university staff to perform low-carbon behavior change in business travel . Front Sustain . 2 : 790807 .

Calel   R , Colmer   J , Dechezleprêtre   A , Glachant   M . 2021 . Do carbon offsets offset carbon? CESifo Working Paper No. 9368 .

Anderson   K . 2012 . The inconvenient truth of carbon offsets . Nature . 484 : 7 .

Bullock   S , Childs   M , Picken   T . 2009 . A dangerous distraction. Why offsetting is failing the climate and people: the evidence . London : Friends of the Earth .

ALLEA . 2022 . Towards climate sustainability of the academic system in Europe and beyond. Berlin: ALLEA—all European Academies .

van Goeverden   K , van Arem   B , van Nes   R . 2016 . Volume and GHG emissions of long-distance travelling by Western Europeans . Transp Res D: Transp Environ . 45 : 28 .

Moss   VA , et al.    2021 . Forging a path to a better normal for conferences and collaboration . Nat Astron . 5 : 213 .

Neubauer   MS , et al.    2021 . Learning from the pandemic: the future of meetings in HEP and beyond. arXiv, arXiv:2106.15783, preprint: not peer reviewed .

Lowell   S , Downie   A , Shiels   H , Storey   K . 2022 . The future of conferences . Development . 149 ( 1 ): Dev200438 .

Tao   Y , Steckel   D , Klemeš   JJ , You   F . 2021 . Trend towards virtual and hybrid conferences may be an effective climate change mitigation strategy . Nat Commun . 12 : 7324 .

Gratiot   N , et al.    2023 . A transition support system to build decarbonization scenarios in the academic community . PLOS Sustain Transform . 2 ( 4 ): 1 .

Moss   VA , et al.    2022 . Around the hybrid conference world in the COVID-19 era . Nat Astron . 6 : 1105 .

Sarabipour   S . 2020 . Research culture: virtual conferences raise standards for accessibility and interactions . eLife . 9 : e62668 .

Skiles   M , et al.    2022 . Conference demographics and footprint changed by virtual platforms . Nat Sustain . 5 ( 2 ): 149 .

Köhler   JK , et al.    2022 . The need for sustainability, equity, and international exchange: perspectives of early career environmental psychologists on the future of conferences . Front Psychol . 13 : 906108 .

Jordan   CJ , Palmer   AA . 2020 . Virtual meetings: a critical step to address climate change . Sci Adv . 6 ( 38 ): eabe5810 .

Zotova   O , Pétrin-Desrosiers   C , Gopfert   A , Van Hove   M . 2020 . Carbon-neutral medical conferences should be the norm . Lancet Planet Health . 4 ( 2 ): e48 .

Sarabipour   S , et al.    2021 . Changing scientific meetings for the better . Nat Hum Behav . 5 : 296 .

Günther   HM , Davenport   JRA , Wolk   SJ , Gallagher   S . 2021 . How to organize an online conference—lessons learned from Cool Stars 20.5 (virtually cool). In: The 20.5th Cambridge Workshop on Cool Stars, Stellar Systems, and the Sun. Vol. 333. CERN: Zenodo .

Anderson   RI , Suyu   SH , Mérand   A . 2021 . Maintaining scientific discourse during a global pandemic: ESO’s first e-conference #H02020 . The Messenger . 184 : 31 .

Roos   G , Oláh   J , Ingle   R , Kobayashi   R , Feldt   M . 2020 . Online conferences—towards a new (virtual) reality . Comput Theor Chem . 1189 : 112975 .

Burtscher   L , Ivanov   VD . 2021 . Report on the ESO workshop “Ground-based thermal infrared astronomy—past, present and future” . The Messenger . 183 : 31 .

Bergantino   AS , Madio   L . 2020 . Intermodal competition and substitution. HSR versus air transport: understanding the socio-economic determinants of modal choice . Res Transp Econ . 79 : 100823 .

Waruru   M . 2018 Sep 19. African and Asian researchers are hampered by visa problems, Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06750-1 .

Ebrahimi   OV . 2022 . Why scientific conferences must mitigate structural barriers . Nat Hum Behav . 6 : 1032 .

Wang   W , et al.    2017 . From triadic closure to conference closure: the role of academic conferences in promoting scientific collaborations . Scientometrics . 113 : 177 .

Campos   R , Leon   F , McQuillin   B . 2018 . Lost in the storm: the academic collaborations that went missing in hurricane ISSAC . Econ J . 128 ( 610 ): 995 .

Heffernan   T . 2021 . Academic networks and career trajectory: ‘there’s no career in academia without networks’ . High Educ Res Dev . 40 ( 5 ): 981 .

Stevens   ARH , Moss   VA . 2023 . Driving action on the climate crisis through astronomers for planet earth and beyond . CAP . 32 : 15 .

Wu   J , et al.    2022 . Virtual meetings promise to eliminate geographical and administrative barriers and increase accessibility, diversity and inclusivity . Nat Biotechnol . 40 : 133 .

Lim   MA , Øerberg   JW . 2017 . Active instruments: on the use of university rankings in developing national systems of higher education . Policy Rev High Educ . 1 ( 1 ): 91 .

Herschberg   C , Benschop   Y . 2018 . Selecting early-career researchers: the influence of discourses of internationalisation and excellence on formal and applied selection criteria in academia . High Educ . 76 : 807 .

Ecklund   EH , Lincoln   AE . 2011 . Scientists want more children . PLoS One . 6 ( 8 ): 1 .

Viry   G , Vincent-Geslin   S , Kaufmann   V . 2015 . Family development and high mobility: gender inequality . Vol. 153 . London (UK) : Palgrave Macmillan .

Leemann   RJ . 2010 . Gender inequalities in transnational academic mobility and the ideal type of academic entrepreneur . Discourse-Abingdon . 31 ( 5 ): 605 .

Jöns   H . 2011 . Transnational academic mobility and gender . Glob Soc Educ . 9 ( 2 ): 183 .

Henderson   EF , Moreau   MP . 2020 . Carefree conferences? Academics with caring responsibilities performing mobile academic subjectivities . Gend Educ . 32 ( 1 ): 70 .

Henderson   EF . 2021 . Sticky care and conference travel: unpacking care as an explanatory factor for gendered academic immobility . High Educ . 82 : 715 .

Bos   AL , Sweet-Cushman   J , Schneider   MC . 2019 . Family-friendly academic conferences: a missing link to fix the “leaky pipeline”?   Polit Groups Identities . 7 ( 3 ): 748 .

Picker   MD . 2020 . Rethinking inclusion and disability activism at academic conferences: strategies proposed by a PhD student with a physical disability . Disabil Soc . 35 ( 1 ): 163 .

Callus   AM . 2017 . Making disability conferences more actively inclusive . Disabil Soc . 32 ( 10 ): 1661 .

Irish   JEN . 2020 . Increasing participation: using the principles of universal design to create accessible conferences . J Conv Event Tour . 21 ( 4 ): 308 .

Joo   R , et al.    2022 . Ten simple rules to host an inclusive conference . PLoS Comput Biol . 18 ( 7 ): e1010164 .

Wynes   S , Donner   SD , Tannason   S , Nabors   N . 2019 . Academic air travel has a limited influence on professional success . J Clean Prod . 226 : 959 .

Seuront   L , Nicastro   KR , Zardi   GI . 2021 . Heads in the clouds: on the carbon footprint of conference-seeded publications in the advancement of knowledge . Ecol Evol . 11 ( 21 ): 15205 .

Leochico   CFD , Giusto   MLD , Mitre   R . 2021 . Impact of scientific conferences on climate change and how to make them eco-friendly and inclusive: a scoping review . JCCH . 4 : 100042 .

Doshi   J , Furlan   AD , Lopes   LC , DeLisa   J , Battistella   LR . 2014 . Conferences and convention centres’ accessibility to people with disabilities . J Rehabil Med . 46 ( 7 ): 616 – 619 .

Counsell   CWW , Elmer   F , Lang   JC . 2020 . Shifting away from the business-as-usual approach to research conferences . Biol Open . 9 ( 10 ): bio056705 .

Lisiecki   JLM , Rohrich   RJM , Chung Kevin   CMDM . 2021 . How to host a virtual educational conference . Plast Reconstr Surg . 148 ( 6 ): 1401 .

Wagner   SM , et al.    2023 . A more sustainable future for astronomy . Nat Astron . 7 : 244 .

Wu   T-H , et al.    2019 . A virtual reality tool for training in global engineering collaboration . Universal Access Inf . 18 : 243 .

Taylor   MJ , et al.    2020 . Using virtual worlds as a platform for collaborative meetings in healthcare: a feasibility study . BMC Health Serv Res . 20 : 442 .

Overton   J . 2021 . An introduction to sustainable aviation fuels . Washington (DC) : Environmental and Energy Study Institute .

Ciers   J , Mandic   A , Toth   LD , Op’t Veld   G . 2019 . Carbon footprint of academic air travel: a case study in Switzerland . Sustainability . 11 ( 1 ): 80 .

Barret   D . 2020 . Estimating, monitoring and minimizing the travel footprint associated with the development of the Athena X-ray Integral Field Unit . Exp Astron . 49 ( 3 ): 183 .

Howe   S , Kolios   A , Brennan   F . 2013 . Environmental life cycle assessment of commercial passenger jet airliners . Transport Res D-Tr E . 19 : 34 .

Jemioło   W . 2015 . Life cycle assessment of current and future passenger air transport in Switzerland [master’s thesis]. Technology Assessment Group, Laboratory for Energy System Analysis, Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), Switzerland .

Klöwer   M , et al.    2021 . Quantifying aviation’s contribution to global warming . Environ Res Lett . 16 : 104027 .

Bofinger   H , Strand   J . 2013 . Calculating the carbon footprint from different classes of air travel. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, 6471 .

Penner   JE , Lister   D , Griggs   DJ , Dokken   DJ , McFarland   M . 1999 . Aviation and the global atmosphere, a special report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change . Cambridge (UK) : Cambridge University Press .

Author notes

Supplementary data, email alerts, citing articles via.

• Contact PNAS Nexus
• Advertising and Corporate Services
• Journals Career Network

Affiliations

• Online ISSN 2752-6542
• Copyright © 2024 National Academy of Sciences
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Best International Travel Insurance for May 2024

Find a Qualified Financial Advisor

Finding a financial advisor doesn't have to be hard. SmartAsset's free tool matches you with up to three fiduciary financial advisors that serve your area in minutes. Each advisor has been vetted by SmartAsset and is held to a fiduciary standard to act in your best interests. Start your search now.

The offers and details on this page may have updated or changed since the time of publication. See our article on Business Insider for current information.

Affiliate links for the products on this page are from partners that compensate us (see our advertiser disclosure with our list of partners for more details). However, our opinions are our own. See how we rate insurance products to write unbiased product reviews.

If you're planning your next vacation or trip out of the country, be sure to factor in travel insurance. Unexpected medical emergencies when traveling can drain your bank account, especially when you're traveling internationally. The best travel insurance companies for international travel can step in to provide you with peace of mind and financial protection while you're abroad.

Our top picks for the best international travel insurance

• Best overall: Allianz Travel Insurance
• Best for exotic travel: World Nomads Travel Insurance
• Best for trip interruption coverage: C&F Travel Insured
• Best for families: Travelex Travel Insurance
• Best for long-term travel: Seven Corners Travel Insurance

How we rate the best international travel insurance »

Compare the top international travel insurance

As a general rule, the most important coverage to have in a foreign country is travel medical insurance , as most US health insurance policies don't cover you while you're abroad. Without travel medical coverage, a medical emergency in a foreign country can cost you. You'll want trip cancellation and interruption coverage if your trip is particularly expensive. And if you're traveling for an extended period of time, you'll want to ensure that your policy is extendable. 

Here are our picks for the best travel insurance companies for international travel.

Best overall: Allianz

Allianz Travel Insurance  offers the ultimate customizable coverage for international trips, whether you're a frequent jetsetter or an occasional traveler. You can choose from an a la carte of single or multi-trip plans, as well as add-ons, including rental car damage, cancel for any reason (CFAR) , adventure sport, and business travel coverage. And with affordable pricing compared to competitors, Allianz is a budget-friendly choice for your international travel insurance needs. 

The icing on the cake is Allyz TravelSmart, Allainz's highly-rated mobile app, which has an average rating of 4.4 out of five stars on the Google Play store across over 2,600 reviews and 4.8 out of five stars from over 22,000 reviews on the Apple app store. So, you can rest easy knowing that you can access your policy and file claims anywhere in the world without a hassle.

Read our Allianz Travel Insurance review here.

Best for exotic trips: World Nomads

World Nomads Travel Insurance  offers coverage for over 150 specific activities, so you can focus on the adventure without worrying about gaps in your coverage. 

You can select its budget-friendly standard plan, starting at $79. Or if you're an adrenaline junkie seeking more thrills, you can opt for the World Nomads' Explorer plan for $120, which includes extra sports like skydiving, scuba diving, and heli-skiing. And World Nomads offers 24/7 assistance, so you can confidently travel abroad, knowing that help is just a phone call away. 

Read our World Nomads Travel Insurance review here.

Best for trip interruption: C&F Travel Insured

C&F Travel Insured offers 100% coverage for trip cancellation, up to 150% for trip interruption, and reimbursement for up to 75% of your non-refundable travel costs with select plans. This means you don't have to worry about losing your hard-earned money on non-refundable travel costs if your trip ends prematurely. 

Travel Insured also stands out for its extensive "reasons for cancellation" coverage. Unlike many insurers, the company covers hurricane warnings from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Read our C&F Travel Insured review here.

Best for family coverage: Travelex

Travelex Travel Insurance offers coverage for your whole crew, perfect for when you're planning a family trip. Its family plan insures all your children 17 and under at no additional cost. The travel insurance provider also offers add-ons like adventure sports and car rental collision coverage to protect your family under any circumstance. Got pets? With Travelex's Travel Select plan, you can also get coverage for your furry friend's emergency medical and transportation expenses. 

Read our Travelex Travel Insurance review here.

Best for long trips: Seven Corners

Seven Corners Travel Insurance offers specialized coverage that the standard short-term travel insurance policy won't provide, which is helpful if you're embarking on a long-term trip. You can choose from several plans, including the Annual Multi-Trip plan, which provides medical coverage for multiple international trips for up to 364 days. This policy also offers COVID-19 medical and evacuation coverage up to $1 million. 

You also get the added benefit of incidental expense coverage. This policy will cover remote health-related services and information, treatment of injury or illness, and live consultations via telecommunication. 

Read our Seven Corners Travel Insurance review here.

How to find the right international travel insurance company 

Different travelers and trips require different types of insurance coverage. So, consider these tips if you're in the market to insure your trip. 

Determine your needs 

• Consider the nature of your travel (leisure, business, or adventure) and the associated risks (medical emergencies, trip cancellations, etc.).
• Determine your budget and the amount of coverage you require. 
• Consider the duration of your trip and the countries you'll be visiting, as some policies won't cover specific destinations. 

Research the reputation of the company 

• Look for the company's reviews and ratings from reputable sources like consumer advocacy groups and independent website reviews. 
• Check the provider's financial stability and credit ratings to ensure it can pay out claims reliably. 
• Investigate the company's claims process to ensure it can provide timely support if you need to file a claim.

Compare prices

• Get quotes from multiple providers to compare rates and coverage options.
• See if the company provides discounts or special offers to lower your cost. 
• Look at the deductible or any out-of-pocket expenses you may have to pay if you file a claim to determine if you can afford it. 

Understanding international travel insurance coverage options 

Travel insurance can be confusing, but we're here to simplify it for you. We'll break down the industry's jargon to help you understand what travel insurance covers to help you decide what your policy needs. Bear in mind that exclusions and limitations for your age and destination may apply. 

Finding the best price for international travel insurance

Your policy cost will depend on several factors, such as the length of your trip, destination, coverage limits, and age. Typically, a comprehensive policy includes travel cancellation coverage costs between 5% and 10% of your total trip cost.

If you're planning an international trip that costs $4,500, you can expect to pay anywhere from $225 to $450 for your policy. Comparing quotes from multiple providers can help you find a budget-friendly travel insurance policy that meets your needs.

How we reviewed international travel insurance companies

We ranked and assigned superlatives to the best travel insurance companies based on our insurance rating methodology . It focuses on several key factors, including: 

• Policy types: We analyzed company offerings such as coverage levels, exclusions, and policy upgrades, taking note of providers that offer a range of travel-related issues beyond the standard coverages. 
• Affordability: We recognize that cheap premiums don't necessarily equate to sufficient coverage. So, we seek providers that offer competitive rates with comprehensive policies and quality customer service. We also call out any discounts or special offers available. 
• Flexibility: Travel insurance isn't one-size-fits-all. We highlight providers that offer a wide array of coverage options, including single-trip, multi-trip, and long-term policies.
• Claims handling: The claims process should be pain-free for policyholders. We seek providers that offer a streamlined process via online claims filing and a track record of handling claims fairly and efficiently. 
• Quality customer service: Good customer service is as important as affordability and flexibility. We highlight companies that offer 24/7 assistance and have a strong record of customer service responsiveness. 

We consult user feedback and reviews to determine how each company fares in each category. We also check the provider's financial rating and volume of complaints via third-party rating agencies. 

International travel insurance FAQs

Which company has the best international travel insurance.

The best insurance policy depends on your individual situation, including your destination and budget. However, popular options include Allianz Travel Insurance, World Nomads, and Travel Guard. 

Are there any limitations or exclusions international travelers should be aware of?

You should pay attention to any limitations regarding covered cancellations, pre-existing conditions, and adventure activities. For example, if you're worried you may have to cancel a trip for work reasons, ensure that you've worked at your company long enough to qualify for cancellation coverage, as that is a condition with some insurers. You should also see if your destination has any travel advisories, as that can affect your policy. 

What insurance do you need for international travel?

Typically, your regular health insurance won't cover you out of the country, so you'll want to make sure your travel insurance has adequate medical emergency coverage. Depending on your travel plans, you may want to purchase add-ons, such as adventure sports coverage, if you're planning on doing anything adventurous like bungee jumping.

Should you get travel insurance for international travel?

Travel insurance is worth the price for international travel because they're generally more expensive, so you have more to lose. Additionally, your regular health insurance won't cover you in other countries, so without travel insurance, you'll end up paying out of pocket for any emergency medical care you receive out of the US.

How far in advance should international travelers purchase travel insurance?

You should purchase travel insurance as soon as possible after making payment on your trip. This makes you eligible for add-ons like coverage for pre-existing conditions and CFAR. It also mitigates the chance of any losses in the days leading up to your trip. 

If you enjoyed this story, be sure to follow Business Insider on Microsoft Start.

This article may contain affiliate links that Microsoft and/or the publisher may receive a commission from if you buy a product or service through those links.