Richard Branson, the international entrepreneur and founder of the Carbon War Room, an organization with a mission to fight emissions, recently upped the ante by adding to Virgin Atlantic’s current aim of 30% carbon reductions per passenger kilometer by 2020, to 50% sustainable fuel use by 2020. In October 2011, Virgin Atlantic, LanzaTech Biofuels, and [...]

Out in the Swiss countryside last week the Solar Impulse made its virgin voyage, where it cruised for 87 minutes at an altitude of 1,200 metres, demonstrating conclusive proof that an airplane can fly without any emissions. This solar-powered airplane is designed to fly day and night without fuel or emissions as it relies solely [...]

On Wednesday last week, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, made his maiden official visit to the United Arab Emirates, where he talked about renewable energy and carbon emissions. Chu talked at length about the importance of developing and deploying renewable energy, including algae for biofuels. He emphasised the huge progress that was being made [...]

In December, we witnessed the first test flight of the Boeing 787, a new generation of super-efficient aircraft. The 787 test aircraft (ZA001 and ZA002) have now logged well over 100 hours of flight tests and are proving to be even more fuel-efficient than the designers thought. Well, on Monday another new Boeing, the 747-8, [...]

While this may sound like a contradiction in terms, it is actually the result of an upcoming initiative by AirFrance which is aimed at cutting CO2 emissions by 5,200 tonnes per year. Air France is to introduce a new economy class seat into its short-haul cabins, a design which is 40% lighter than previous seats [...]

It’s all happening in the Far East this week, where some significant alliances have been achieved with regards to the aviation sector. China, for example, is expected to become Boeing’s research and development partner for environmentally friendly technologies designed to improve the environmental performance of aircraft. A key part of their partnership will be to [...]

‘Research and Markets’ have provided us with some uplifting news this week, announcing the release of their new ‘Airports go green’ report. As we’ve noted in recent weeks, airports have made significant contributions in fighting climate change by adopting numerous strategies to limit their emissions. ‘Airports go green’ is dishing out some well-deserved praise to [...]

At a ceremony today in Toulouse, the regional aircraft manufacturer ATR presented their newest product, the ATR 72-600, the first in what’s going to be the ATR ‘-600 series’. The new aircraft is which has been designed specifically to have the lowest possible fuel consumption and CO2 emissions per passenger.  These regional turboprop aircraft are [...]

No, hopefully not. This design concept, by a British-based design agency who specialises in transport design, will hopefully go no further than the drawing board. Although it claims to allow for greater occupancy of an aircraft, I am not convinced that would be so – it would also only be an option for narrowbody aircraft. [...]

I posted a week or so ago about the third in a series of ‘ASPIRE’ flights that took place across the Pacific Ocean. Following on from demonstrations of the ‘perfect flight’ by Air New Zealand and Qantas, United Airlines performed a flight last Friday using every possible air traffic control and operational efficiency innovation available. [...]