News
Cathay Pacific Airways becomes founding member of climate taskforce
October 29th 2021
Cathay Pacific Airways has joined other airlines and the Boston Consulting Group to become a founding member of the Aviation Climate Taskforce (ACT), a new non-profit organisation aimed at tackling the elimination of carbon emissions. Read More » Other airline members include Lufthansa, Virgin Atlantic, Air France-KLM and the three big U.S. carriers. The consortium aims to tackle decarbonisation through innovation and collaboration as the industry strives to meet its pledge of net-zero emissions by 2050. “Dramatically reducing emissions is a critically important but also highly challenging task facing the aviation sector,’’ said Cathay Pacific CEO, Augustus Tang, “At Cathay Pacific, we recognise the importance of working with different sectors to develop the kinds of radically new technologies that will be required to decarbonise airline operations and enable us to meet our net-zero carbon emissions goal.” The establishment of the ACT coincides with the operation of Etihad Airways’ most sustainable flight ever, reducing carbon emissions by 72% in absolute terms compared with an equivalent flight operated in 2019. The airline said the flight required collaboration across the aviation ecosystem and coordinated airspace management for optimised flight routing, new technology flight deck tools, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), contrail reduction and airport handling processes. Despite a problem loading the 38% SAF blend directly into the aircraft because of infrastructure constraints at Heathrow Airport, the flight avoided the production of about 64 tonnes of CO2.
