At Farnborough Airshow Hélène Gagnon shared with us the environmental initiatives being spearheaded by business jet and commercial aircraft manufacturer Bombardier.
Watch the video to hear how Bombardier incorporates environmental stewardship throughout the production lifecycle; the company's leadership in establishing a carbon offset programme for business jet customers; and how Bombardier is helping the aviation industry 'walk the talk' with recycling at the air show
If you are coming to the Farnborough Air Show, you'll be able to pick up a small newspaper that we had printed for the event - the Green Flight Times [2mb]. This publication is available for free around the air show site.
It's a simple concept - a digest of environmental news releases and announcements from across the world of commercial aviation from the last three months. It's a very clear demonstration that there is A LOT happening in all parts of the world to make our industry's footprint a bit smaller. I had originally thought that three month's worth of news would take just a few pages... but this is actually a 12-page tabloid newspaper! Just goes to show how much our industry is focussed on environmental efficiency.
Download the PDF of the Green Flight Times here and remember to check-in with our newswire for the latest news from across the industry, updated daily.
And don't forget to follow us on twitter (@enviroaero) and Facebook.
Did you know that by shifting the load of bags and cargo in the hold of an aircraft can reduce fuel use in the flight by as much as half a percent? Or that one airport has saved 33,000 tonnes of CO2 each year by installing fixed electrical ground power? Or that the Wright Brothers' first flight in 1903 travelled around 37 metres, but that aircraft today are built to fly over 15 million metres without much effort?
These facts all demonstrate the progress that has been, and is being, made in fuel efficiency by the aviation sector. They can all be found in a new publication that we have produced called the Beginner's Guide to Aviation Efficiency.
It is a follow-up to the very successful publication Beginner's Guide to Aviation Biofuels that we released last year. As our Executive Director, Paul Steele says: "The progress on achieving greener flights has been extraordinary. For aviation, efficiency is at the very heart of what we do on a daily basis. Fuel is expensive and heavy to carry, so airlines have long focused efforts to reduce the amount of fuel they use and aircraft makers spend a majority of their research development budgets on reducing fuel use."
It is important to point to the vast array of projects being undertaken across the industry. We try to provide a snapshot of them here on enviro.aero, but it is really quite extraordinary to discover just how many different parts of the aviation experience are focused on operational efficiency, infrastructure efficiency and, importantly, new technologies.
As Paul points out, "The technology being used today is amazing. Most passengers don't think about it, but even just looking at the engines on a modern aircraft you have some of the safest, most efficient, high-technology machines on earth... but built to withstand daily use, huge differences in temperature, lightning strikes, hail storms and the massive forces in play during flight."
When you put it that way, I think we're doing a pretty good job.
Boeing has unvieled a new prototype unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or spy plane to you and I, called Phantom Eye which runs on hydrogen fuel. While this strange-looking aircraft will not be used for commercial flights, we often get questions such as "when will we be flying on hydrogen-powered planes?".
The answer is: "no time soon". While hydrogen is a great, clean, fuel source, it's main problem is the volume of fuel required. Compared to our current fuel, or the biofuel we will be using in the coming years, hydrogen has a lot less 'power' for each litre of fuel - and therefore a lot more needs to be carried. In effect, you'd almost need to replace the whole lower deck of an A380 with fuel tanks to power a flight of any reasonable length.
This is not to say that hydrogen might not have some benefits and projects like the Phantom Eye and Boeing's hydrogen fuel cell are providing much-needed insights into the use of such fuels.
