Technology

Airlines Intensify Environmental Efforts

posted: 19 June 2008 09:23 pm ET

: Alaska Airlines' specially painted Boeing 737 'Salmon-Thirty-Salmon' flies high over the forests of Washington state. In addition to a host of other environmental initiatives, the airline has accelerated the retirement of its fleet of MD-80s and expects to save a considerable amount of fuel, money, and CO2 emissions by becoming an all-737 airline from August 2008. Credit: Alaska Airlines

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Pressed on all sides by soaring fuel prices, economic slowdown and poor public perception regarding their environmental performance, airlines in North America are stepping up their environmental sustainability efforts dramatically.

At the first aviation environmental forum ever to be held in the United States, the Eco-Aviation Conference hosted by Air Transport World magazine and Leeham Co. LLC, airlines such as Continental, Air Canada, Northwest, Alaska Airlines and Southwest revealed a wide variety of efforts to improve their fuel efficiency and environmental friendliness.

Various airlines launched environmental initiatives much earlier than is generally realized and have already reaped substantial results, but the public remains largely unaware of the carriers' efforts. One such airline is Continental, whose $12 billion investment in new aircraft since 1997 has reduced its emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) by 2 million metric tonnes compared with the amounts produced by the aircraft the new jets replaced, said Leah Raney, managing director of global environmental affairs for Continental.

"We're all doing the same things, we're all doing it right, we're just not marketing ourselves" well as being environmentally responsible, said Jeff Martin, senior director of flight operations for Southwest Airlines.

Both Southwest and Continental also are fitting winglets to hundreds of their Boeing jets. By reducing the ratio of lift to drag on the aircraft's wings as it flies through the air, winglets reduce the amount of fuel used per flight by several percent. Continental already has fitted more than 230 jets with winglets and even though it is planning to retire its older Boeing 737-300s and 737-500s in the next two years, "We're still putting winglets on them, because it saves fuel," said Raney.

Southwest adopting RNP for all flights

Martin used the Eco-Aviation Conference to announce that Southwest would "accept the FAA's call to action to implement performance-based navigation, reducing airspace congestion and carbon emissions."

Southwest has committed to spend $175 million over the next six years to equip its aircraft, develop procedures and charts and train its pilots to fly highly exact Required Navigation Performance (RNP) approaches to and departures from the 64 airports it serves. The airline expects these steps, developed in partnership with the FAA and RNP-route pioneer Naverus, to save it $25 million a year in fuel costs and emit 156,000 tons less of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually.

Known for being able to turn round an arriving aircraft within 20 minutes for its next departure, Southwest has already switched to using gate electric power for its jets while they sit at the gate. The pilots turn off the arriving 737's auxiliary power unit (APU) as it arrives at the gate and ground crew attach an electric power cable to the aircraft. The APU isn’t turned on again until 5 minutes before departure.

EcoPower wash

Southwest also is one of a growing number of customers for Pratt & Whitney's EcoPower wash process that substantially reduces an engine's fuel burn by keeping its compressor blades very clean aerodynamically. The wash forces water through the engine. It is carried out by a specially fitted truck at the gate, which completes the process in less than 90 minutes and recovers and recycles the water used for cleaning as it exits the rear of the engine.

Delta Air Lines, meanwhile, is installing WheelTug electric motors in the nose-wheel hubs of its Boeing 737-800s. Powered by the aircraft's APU, each motor is powerful enough to allow an aircraft as big as a Boeing 767 to back away from a gate, complete turns, and taxi out to the runway at a speed of up to some 21 mph before starting up its engines.

Alaska Airlines, which pioneered the use of RNP flying so that it could reliably land at Juneau, Alaska, which is surrounded by mountains and often has very cloudy weather, represents a typical snapshot of a modern-day airline. It is installing winglets across its fleet, accelerating the retirement of its fuel-hungry MD-80s to become an all-737 airline by August, and using ground power for its aircraft instead of running their APUs while they are at the gate.

Alaska going all-turboprop for regional flights

Expanding the reach and scale of its corporate and on-board-catering recycling efforts, like many other airlines, Alaska Airlines also will be the first U.S. carrier to return entirely to all-turboprop operations for its regional flying.

Horizon Air, Alaska's regional subsidiary, will standardize on an all-Bombardier Q400 fleet by 2009, adding at least 17 more Q400s to the 33 it already has in service. The additional aircraft will replace 21 Bombardier CRJ 700 regional jets now in Horizon Air's fleet, and at the same time the carrier will retire 16 smaller Bombardier Q200 turboprops it has in service, said Scott Ridge, Alaska Airlines' managing director technical operations and support flight operations.

Northwest Airlines has both launched a carbon-offset donation program on its Web site — allowing passengers making bookings to donate to CO2-offsetting programs, if they wish, at costs averaging $12 to $18 per domestic flight depending on trip length — and has created an environmental partnership with The Nature Conservancy, the world's largest conservation organization.

No detail is too small for Northwest to examine in terms of recycling and environmental sustainability. "We've looked at things like 'Do we switch from cans to 2-liter bottles of soft drinks on the plane?'" said Erin Heitkamp, a senior environmental policy engineer with Northwest. The airline has reduced its GHG emissions by 27 percent since 2000, reduced its fuel burn by 575 million gallons, and expects further substantial reductions in the near term with its decision this week to ground in the next few months almost all of the 95 elderly DC-9s remaining in its fleet.

Air Canada's City Pair Cost Index

Air Canada, meanwhile, has developed a unique and powerful method to fly more efficiently. The airline has developed a "City Pair Cost Index" (CPCI) algorithm which divides the total time cost of each minute of a flight made by a particular aircraft by the fuel cost, said Capt. Claude Saint-Martin, Air Canada's manager, fuel efficiency and environmental matters.

Pilots on North American flights then feed the algorithm into the flight management systems of their aircraft. Air Canada intends CPCI eventually to be a four-phase program that would allow dynamic flight-plan adjustment throughout any flight in its network, based on the flight's actual take-off time.

In Part I, which was launched in April 2006, pilots on Air Canada flights within North America that would otherwise arrive early began inputting CPCI indices into their aircraft's flight management systems, allowing the units to calculate if there was a cost and fuel benefit of arriving on time a few minutes later. If there was, the FMS would slow the aircraft down slightly. Air Canada saved 80,000 tonnes of fuel in the first year as a result, emitting some 250,000 fewer tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, said Saint-Martin.