Etihad Airways Operates World’s Most Intensive Sustainable Flights

Etihad Airways has successfully performed the world’s most intensive sustainable flight testing programme, operating 42 flights over a five-day period to test operational efficiencies, technology and procedures that will reduce carbon emissions.

The programme, coinciding with Earth Day 2022, included 22 contrail prevention flights over the course of three days.

Etihad points to Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF), which are in excess of six times more expensive than conventional aviation fuels at the moment and incredibly difficult to the point of impractical to procure, acknowledging that both SAF and Lower Carbon Aviation Fuel (LCAF) are needed for aviation’s energy transition.

Etihad’s newest aircraft and sustainability beacon alongside its established Greenliner programme, the Sustainable50 A350-1000, officially became the first A350 to operate as an EcoFlight.

The Greenliner and Sustainable50 programmes in partnership with Boeing, Airbus, GE and Rolls Royce is Etihad’s platform to foster industry collaboration and tackle the biggest challenges the industry faces for decarbonsation, operating as a testing platform as well as call to industry, governments and regulators for solutions-driven collaboration.

Through these programmes, and Etihad’s ongoing research and testing initiatives such as EcoFlights, Etihad encourages and invites partners from across the aviation sector to join and test sustainability initiatives on scheduled Boeing 787 and A350 operations.

The results are then processed and validated, with the most sustainable initiatives used as a base for improving the performance of the global airline community.

The results and data from Etihad’s Earth Day EcoFlight and Contrail flight testing programme will be formulated and analysed over the coming weeks, to be added to the knowledge base it has built to support the aviation industry on its journey to decarbonisation.