UAL Corp. joins emissions fight

Three U.S. airlines and the Air Transport Association will ask a U.K. judge to transfer a challenge of Britain's implementation of European Union emission-trading regulations to the European Court of Justice.

A date for the U.K. court hearing is "anticipated within the next few weeks," Nancy Young, ATA vice president for environmental affairs, said in a telephone interview yesterday. The likelihood of the U.K. referring the challenge to the ECJ is "high," Young said, because the U.K. Department of Energy and Climate Change also supports the transfer.

AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, Continental Airlines Inc. and UAL Corp.'s United Airlines joined the ATA in their complaint in December, saying the rules "violated the U.S.-EU bilateral Air Transport Agreement of April 2007 and the Kyoto Protocol," according to a London court filing.

"As expected, the U.K. didn't agree with us on the legal issues," Young said, "But they did agree with us that the matter should be heard at the ECJ."

The EU is adding airlines to the European emissions-trading system, the world's biggest greenhouse-gas market, in 2012 to fight climate change. The system imposes a cap on industrial emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for rising temperatures. United Nations scientists say reductions in emissions are needed to keep the planet from overheating.