My organisation, the Air Transport Action Group, is all about coordination of aviation industry partners for a greener future for flight. We bring together commercial rivals such as Airbus and Boeing and operational partners such as airports, airlines and air traffic control organisations in order to craft, plan and execute common environmental objectives, such as our cross-industry target of carbon neutral growth from 2020.

One example of such collaboration has just been announced – Heathrow Airport, Singapore Airlines, NATS (the UK’s air traffic control organisation) and Airbus have been working on a project to implement new take-off and departures procedures for the A380 aircraft. By working together, these organisations have enabled take-offs using less power from the engines, followed by ‘flexible acceleration’ after the aircraft reaches 1,500 feet. This basically means the pilot is free to set the thrust of the engines to best match conditions for each flight – taking into full account wind speed and temperature etc.

This procedure will save on average 300 kilos of fuel (that’s 945 kilos of carbon dioxide) off each take-off. When you consider that Singapore Airlines flies the A380 to Heathrow daily, that equates to an annual saving of just under 350 tonnes of CO2. Of course, the A380 is already a very efficient aircraft in its own right, as more of them enter service, new operational procedures will only add to that efficiency.

Now that Heathrow, NATS, Airbus and Singapore Airlines have been running the pilot programme for a year, the airport operator BAA is set to extend the programme to other operators of the A380 – Emirates and Qantas.

Good things happen when we work together!

- Image from Flickr user hyku