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In response to strong growth in air transportation CO₂ emissions, governments and industry began to explore and implement mitigation measures and targets in the early 2000s. However, in the absence of rigorous analyses assessing the costs for mitigating CO₂ emissions, these policies could be economically wasteful. Here we identify the cost-effectiveness of CO₂ emission reductions from narrow-body aircraft, the workhorse of passenger air transportation. We find that in the US, a combination of fuel burn reduction strategies could reduce the 2012 level of life cycle CO₂ emissions per passenger kilometre by around 2% per year to mid-century. These intensity reductions would occur at zero marginal costs for oil prices between US$50–100 per barrel. Even larger reductions are possible, but could impose extra costs and require the adoption of biomass-based synthetic fuels. The extent to which these intensity …