Air traffic controllers need to address climate change now or risk having harsh or punitive measures imposed upon them, Airservices Australia chief executive Greg Russell has warned.

His comments came as the International Air Transport Association estimated that fuel consumption had been cut by an average of 62 litres and carbon dioxide emissions by 160kg for every minute of flying time saved.

An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has also estimated that there is a 12 per cent inefficiency in air-traffic management globally, producing an extra 73 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and costing $US13.5 billion.

Mr Russell told the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation conference in the Netherlands this week that debates in the European parliament, calls for carbon taxes on airline tickets and studies into aviation emissions showed that the climate change debate was shifting to transport.

"In this environment of mounting public and political pressure for action, the risk is that an unresponsive industry has harsh measures imposed upon (it)," he said.

"Aviation is facing that risk.

"A failure by air navigation service providers to accept the urgency of the need for action on greenhouse emissions will ... lead to punitive action by governments. We must actively pursue, and be seen as pursuing, measures to reduce fuel burn and therefore reduce emissions."

Mr Russell said long-term worries about the huge expected growth in air travel was ringing alarm bells and, even with the introduction of new fuel-efficient aircraft, savings in average carbon emissions per flight were expected to be eclipsed by the predicted growth in air travel.

Some scientists had suggested that emissions at high altitude were almost three times more damaging than at ground level.

"Our industry is already starting to respond, driven partly by cost pressures, in part by a desire to demonstrate good corporate citizenship, but also an awareness of the potential regulator risk of inaction," he said.

"And so we have airlines buying more fuel-efficient aircraft, manufacturers examining alternative fuels, and trials under way at British airports to tow planes to take-off areas. But what are we, the air navigation service providers, doing?"

Mr Russell said Australia had introduced flex tracks -- a way of allowing airlines the flexibility to use up-to-date wind information to make best use of tailwinds or to avoid headwinds -- and was developing a way of more accurately predicting landing times.

This allowed controllers to hold or slow an aircraft at upper levels or on the ground.

An aircraft forced to hold at lower levels burnt four to five times as much fuel as at an upper level and 10 times as much as it did when held on the ground.

Mr Russell said Airservices Australia had also commissioned the University of New South Wales to make a baseline study on aviation emissions that would be made available to regulators.

IATA Director-General Giovanni Bisignani told the same conference the airline umbrella group's move to optimise 350 routes in 2006 yielded 6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide savings.

But he said IATA still saw issues on all continents and said Europe's failure to implement a Single European Sky was costing airlines 3.3 billion euros a year and producing an additional 12 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.