Travelers flying into Sweden from across the Atlantic will soon be able to do so with a cleaner environmental conscience. Scandinavian Airlines is taking part in a pioneering scheme in which its aircraft “coast” in to land at Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport, saving fuel and reducing emissions.
People in Sweden and around the globe are more and more concerned about the impact their travels have on the environment. Photo: LFV/Morgan Norman
As environmental awareness grows around the globe, air travel is becoming increasingly controversial – like wearing a fur coat, as one newspaper recently declared. With extensive media coverage about climate change and the environmental damage caused by airliners, many travelers booking flights now do so with a twinge of guilt about the greenhouse gases their flights will be generating.
Wide green yonder
Air travel is the fastest-growing source of greenhouse emissions that cause climate change. At the moment it accounts for two to three per cent of emissions, but passenger numbers are growing by 4 percent per year. And while there are currently about 18,000 commercial aircraft in operation, another 25,000 are expected to enter service in the next 20 years. So it is widely accepted that reducing the environmental impact of flying will be a key challenge in tackling climate change.
In an effort to reduce the amount of fuel it uses and the carbon dioxide it creates, SAS Scandinavian Airlines spearheads the groundbreaking Green Approaches initiative (also known as Green Flights or Green Landings). The principle is simple: it is the aviation equivalent of taking your foot off the gas while going downhill in a car.
With the Green Approach initiative, SAS planes coming in for landing go softer on the environment. Photo: Daniel Asplund/LFV
With the help of new software, air traffic controllers decide the direction of approach and precise landing time right after takeoff. This means the end of the so-called holding pattern, where aircraft are made to fly in circles – burning fuel all the while – while waiting for their turn to land. Instead, the plane can immediately coast all the way down to the runway, rather than in stages as happens now with a burst on the throttle in between.
Everyone wins
Niels Eirik Nertun, SAS’s environmental director, says Green Approaches creates a “triple win” situation. “First of all, when we have a continuous descent from flight level we save between 100kg and 150kg of fuel per landing,” he says. “That means a saving of about 400kg of carbon dioxide.”
Taken over a whole year, that would be a saving for SAS’s Swedish operation of about 29,000 tons of fuel, 90,000 tons of carbon dioxide and 315 tons of nitrogen oxide.
Benefit number two is on noise pollution. “Part of the Arlanda area is sensitive to noise, so when you put your engines on idle and have a continuous slope down it is much less noisy,” says Nertun. The third benefit is that Green Approaches makes possible an increase in the number of flights an airport can handle. Nertun says that in the long run it could mean that existing terminals can increase their capacity, ruling out the need to build new ones.
Green Approaches is one of a number of initiatives by the aviation industry in Sweden to reduce its environmental impact. Both Luftfartsverket – the Swedish civil aviation authority – and SAS offer passengers the possibility to offset the carbon dioxide emissions generated by their flights, and SAS hopes to be one of the first airlines to blend biosynthetic fuel with normal aviation fuel. Meanwhile, a Stockholm-based company, Swedish Biofuels, earlier this summer received funding from the US Department of Defense to develop a 100 percent biological jet fuel based on grain crops.
Going transatlantic
Arlanda hosted the first Green Approach landing in 2006 and is now attracting international interest. Foto: Tommy Säfström/LFV
Green Approaches has been in operation at Arlanda since April last year for some domestic SAS flights, with transatlantic flights starting this autumn. Luftfartsverket plans to roll it out at other Swedish airports in the near future.
The scheme has attracted widespread interest from around the world, not least from China, where dozens of new international airports will be built over the next decade. Chinese officials have visited Arlanda to see how Green Approaches works in practice with a view to introducing it themselves.
It is expected to become the standard operating procedure the world over, but this will take several years as the system requires new software to be installed and air traffic controllers to be trained in its use.
Step in the right direction
Environmental campaigners have given a cautious welcome to the initiative, saying it is a step in the right direction, but that the only solution to the environmental damage cause by air travel is to reduce the overall number of flights.
Tarjei Haaland, climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace, says: “You won’t solve the problem by Green Landing schemes alone – there are many other actions too that need to be taken. However it is good to see SAS in the leading role here, and we hope to see other airlines doing the same thing.”
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David Wiles is the editor of Sweden Today magazine.
The author alone is responsible for the opinions expressed in this article.
Classification: A210EN
© Photo 1: Karin Smeds/Folio
© Photo 2: Daniel Asplund/LFV
© Photo 3: Tommy Säfström/LFV
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