SIA launches green flights to LAX
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Singapore Airlines (SIA) and the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) have announced that they are working with the US Federal Aviation Administration to launch a new trans-pacific ‘green’ flight between Singapore and Los Angeles. Flight SQ37, which operates the trans-Pacific route using an Airbus A340-500, will employ enhanced gate-to-gate air traffic management operational procedures to reduce fuel burn and carbon emissions in all phases of the flight. The flight is part of the Asia and Pacific Initiative to Reduce Emissions (ASPIRE) green flights initiative.
These include the adoption of ‘User-Preferred Routes’, ‘Dynamic Airborne Reroute Procedures’ and ’30/30 Reduced Oceanic Separation’, which allow pilots to take full advantage of atmospheric conditions, such as prevailing winds, to reduce separation between aircraft and shorten flight time.
Other techniques include ‘Time-Based Arrivals Management’ and ‘Arrivals Optimisation’ which allow aircraft to fly with engines set at idle mode in continuous descent from a high altitude during the landing phase of the flight, thus reducing fuel burn.
Yap Ong Heng, Director-General of CAAS, said; “CAAS aims to actively contribute to reducing aviation’s environmental footprint where we can. Hence, our participation in the ‘ASPIRE-Daily City Pair’ programme, with the launch of the LAX-SIN ‘city-pair’ with SIA. This will clearly demonstrate how collaboration among ASPIRE partners, airlines and other Air Navigation Service Providers in employing best practices and technologies in air traffic management can achieve significant reductions in fuel consumption and carbon emissions for flights.”
SIA’s Senior Vice-President Flight Operations, Gerard Yeap, added; “We are pleased to be able to implement these flight procedures on a regular basis, and see this as yet another step towards greener skies. We will be monitoring the flight closely to track the fuel and emission savings, but we expect to reduce fuel burn by two tonnes and achieve carbon emission savings of around 6.3 tonnes for each Los Angeles-Singapore sector.”
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