Google accused of airbrushing carbon emissions in flight search results

Tweak to search engine effectively halves the environmental impact stated for each trip

Google has been accused of airbrushing aviation emissions, after the company changed its flight search engine to halve the CO₂ emissions attributed to any given trip.

The change, first noted by the BBC, affects a feature on Google Flights that shows the estimated carbon emissions of each route. The company flags routes with higher or lower than typical emissions, and also reports the total CO₂ emitted per passenger on any given journey.