Euronews Green exclusive: Anthony Viaux had it all – a dream job, a thriving career and a great salary. But he didn’t want any of it in the age of the climate crisis.
“When I was in my plane watching the forest fires from above, I couldn’t help but feel responsible.”
Anthony Viaux, a captain at Air France, was in the midst of an internal struggle between his passion and his ethics. Since he was a young boy, he’d dreamed of being a pilot and had worked hard to get his wings and rise through the ranks to become a captain.
But he couldn’t ignore the impact his career was having on the planet.
Soaring over the French Alps, he would notice, year by year, the snow retreating from the peaks. On many occasions, his night flights across Europe would give him a bird’s eye view of raging wildfires below.
“I’d say to myself, I contributed to that,” he says. “People don’t make the links between things like aviation and forest fires. But I did.”
Ultimately, Anthony’s eco-anxieties became too much, and he walked away from a career that spanned two decades and one that he loved very dearly.
Anthony Viaux: A long struggle to become a pilot
Anthony had long dreamed of flying aeroplanes, but having not particularly excelled at maths and physics in school, he put his dream on the back burner and went to business school instead.
To satiate his appetite for flying, he joined a local gliding club and met some like-minded people. It was through them that he realised there was another route to getting his wings.
Independently, Anthony studied and sat exams for the theoretical side of commercial piloting, and eventually enrolled himself in pilot school. In 2000, he was offered a job flying for Regional Airlines, a subsidiary of Air France that is today known as Hop!
Beginning on small turboprop planes like the Saab 2000, he built up his hours and experience and eventually graduated to being type-rated on his first jet – the Airbus A320 – flying for the mainline airline, Air France.
What followed was a long and happy career with the French flag carrier, including flying long-haul Airbus A330s and A340s for many years. In 2018, he became captain on the A320 and flew as the senior pilot for four more years.
But everything was not right in Anthony’s world.
“Ever since around 2015 or 2016, I’d begun to feel bad about flying,” he explains. “I became a bit eco-anxious, which to start with didn’t bother me very much, but year by year, the anxiety grew.”
Leaving it all behind
Being a pilot comes with some of the best views in the world. Sitting at the front of the plane with a large window, airline pilots get to see the world in ways others can only dream of. But for Anthony, the view was starting to become rather uncomfortable.
Regularly flying over the French Alps, Anthony noticed that the snow on the peaks was retreating more with every year.
During serious wildfires in Europe, Anthony would often see the blaze from his vantage point on the flight deck. “It really touched me,” he says. “I was flying over these forest fires and felt like I couldn’t do anything.”
“More than that,” he continues, “up there, I was actually contributing to the problem.”
Wracked with guilt and torn between his love of flying and his morals, Anthony had no choice but to take a break. In 2022, he began a two year sabbatical, “because I wanted to think about what I wanted to do in my life, and whether I wanted to continue to be a pilot.”
Bravely, Anthony slowly came to the conclusion that he wanted to stop flying. But it wasn’t an easy decision.
“It was a childhood dream,” he explains. “I worked really hard to get where I did. It’s not easy to get a job as a pilot, and even once you’re in the airline, it’s not easy to become a captain.”
Leaving it all behind would mean losing a good salary, leaving a job he loved and all his colleagues at Air France he’d worked with for twenty years.
“It’s described as the ‘sunk cost’ effect,” says Anthony. “When you’ve invested so much in what you’ve done, in yourself, in time, in money, you’ve gone too far and it becomes hard to just walk away.”
When his sabbatical came to an end, Anthony took the plunge and quit. He posted on LinkedIn on 2 January 2025, the day his contract with Air France ended, “I really loved working at Air France. But today I feel the urgent need to realign myself with my inner compass, which tells me that my convictions are no longer in line with this profession.”
Not all of Anthony’s peers were supportive of his move. Colleagues from other airlines were critical of his position, attempting to make him feel silly for choosing a new path.
“I think seeing someone like me leaving the business makes them think,” Anthony explains. “They start to think ‘maybe I’m not seeing something’, or they just don’t want to see the problems.”
“They called me a fool and called me a quitter,” he adds sadly. “You took the money and you left, which is completely untrue, because I left with zero euros.”
But Anthony wasn’t alone in his anxiety, and soon received invitations to groups and communities where he could talk freely about his concerns for the climate. One of those groups was Safe Landing, a group of aviation workers challenging industry leaders to conform with climate science and reject dangerous growth.
“I found out that there were actually pilots like me that were anxious who had created this safe place to talk,” Anthony explains. “The people who understand and are aware can also see the urgency of the situation.”
What was the turning point for this Air France captain?
Anthony had spent much time learning about climate change while he was flying for Air France. In particular, he became inspired by acclaimed French engineer Jean-Marc Jancovici, developer of the ‘Bilan Carbone’ carbon accounting method used by the French government and active climate change influencer.
As his understanding of climate impacts grew, Anthony realised that he could never align what he did for a living with his personal ethics.
“I couldn’t bear it any more,” he says, “burning all those thousands and thousands of litres of fuel for every flight.”
We often hear comparisons drawn between aviation and car use, claiming that, per passenger kilometre, flying is more efficient. But these calculations are often based on one person driving in the car, and on a route that would be impossible to drive.
For example, the ICAO carbon emissions calculator tells us that a flight from Paris to New York would generate 0.32 tonnes of CO2 per passenger. To drive the 5,829 km in a car, by yourself, would generate 1.4 tonnes of CO2. Even if you had a full car of four people, the CO2 per passenger would still be 0.35 tonnes.
But is that a fair comparison? The calculations are based on a full aircraft of passengers, and not every flight is full all the time. Plus, of course, you can’t drive between Paris and New York.
You cannot compare to things that are not comparable,” Anthony concludes. “Especially because this calculation doesn’t take into account the contrail of the flight, which more or less doubles the impact on the greenhouse effect.”
Is aviation doing enough to reduce its emissions?
Estimates are that, currently, aviation contributes 2-3 per cent of the global CO2 emissions. However, when non-CO2 emissions are included, such as nitrogen oxides and contrails, aviation’s impact on global warming rises to around 5 per cent.
But increasing demand for air travel could see aviation’s share of CO2 emissions rising significantly. The International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) estimates that, by 2050, aviation could be responsible for up to 22 per cent of global CO2.
The industry is working hard to reduce its CO2 emissions within the confines of current technologies. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has committed to achieving net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050, in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Without new technology, these savings have to come from what’s available today. Newer aircraft can cut emissions by around a quarter compared to older jets, and many airlines are investing in updating their fleets with this in mind. Building these aircraft, and scrapping the old ones, creates more emissions.
There is also sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), which claims to reduce lifecycle CO2 emissions by 80 per cent. However, it’s expensive, and not available at the scale needed to support a huge industry like this.
Many airlines are adopting operational efficiencies, such as continuous descent on approach and airspace modifications, in order to drive down fuel consumption.
Air France has set ambitious targets for reducing its environmental impact. By 2030, it aims to reduce CO2 by 30 per cent per passenger kilometre compared to 2019 levels. It is working towards this with new aircraft orders, operational enhancements and carbon offsetting projects.
“Air France is doing all they can,” Anthony says. “I know, because I’ve seen it from the inside.”
“Air France is not the problem, because they cannot do more than they are doing. That was part of my decision to leave, because I became aware that even though Air France was doing its best, in the end, it’s not enough.”
Air France has been contacted for comment.
The airline industry continues to grow while trying to become more sustainable
Anthony discusses the ‘rebound effect,’ and how all the efforts like buying more efficient aircraft, using sustainable aviation fuels and adopting eco-piloting methods, is negated because of growth.
In Airbus’s latest Global Market Forecast, the European planemaker anticipates a substantial expansion of aviation over the next two decades. By 2043, it expects more than 48,000 aircraft in our skies, around 20,000 more than there are today.
Airbus says less than half of the anticipated 40,850 new aircraft deliveries will be to rejuvenate older fleets. Fifty-eight per cent, or 23,680 planes, will be purely for growth.
“That’s the main issue with aviation, it’s just growth, growth, growth,” Anthony explains. “The solution, and what I stand for, is a degrowth of the industry. But it’s naive to think that’s ever going to happen, but that’s why I left.”
Anthony likens his journey to that of Bernard Moitessier, a well-known French sailor who, in 1968, was leading the Golden Globe yacht race around the world. But instead of crossing the finish line and winning his prize, Moitessier diverted, sailing for three more weeks to reach Tahiti, saying after that that he wanted to live a more authentic life and not be driven by the commercialisation of sailing.
“We don’t make the links between flying and global warming or forest fires,” Anthony says. “We don’t change our habits. But there is a link, a very strong link, between our choices and disasters like the LA wildfires, but people don’t make the connection.”
He adds that it doesn’t help when would-be travellers are bombarded by advertisements from low-cost airlines offering ridiculously cheap fares. Tempting offers are often the straw that breaks the camel’s back when it comes to making climate-conscious decisions.
“People think, ‘even if I don’t go, the plane will leave anyway, so we might as well buy this cheap ticket and go’,” he says. “Everybody is responsible for this mess.”
For Anthony, now immersed in his naturopathy business, playing music with his pop band and authoring a book on his flying experiences, life is a bit more comfortable. “It’s a relief,” he says, “but there is still a bit of anxiety because I cannot extract myself from the world and from what’s going on.”