AirAsia ‘Go Green’ Efforts Reduce its CO2 Emissions in 2015

29th Apr 2016

One of the biggest riddles every mayor airline has to solve is how to reduce the amount of pollution it generates. With its multiple ‘go green’ efforts, including the ‘Green24’ campaign, AirAsia has managed to reduce up 22,602 tonnes of CO2 emissions in last year.

AirAsia Group Chief Pilot Rajesh Gill said the ‘Green24’ campaign, which started at the end of 2014, carried out more than 40 environment-friendly initiatives.

Rajesh said:

One of the many initiatives was when we installed sharklets on our A320 aircraft. If you fly with them you will see the part of the wing is moving skywards, this reduces the amount of drag which in turn reduces the amount of fuel needed, therefore results in reduced amount of greenhouse gas emission.

AirAsia Chief Pilot also said AirAsia introduced other initiatives, such as carrying less weight onboard and this too helped reduce the fuel usage.

He said:

We used to carry up to 23kg of manuals and books on board, now all that has been transferred into tablets. An A320 aircraft has a water tank that can carry up to 200 liters of water, but we change the amount according to the duration of the flight. If the flight is from Kuala Lumpur to Penang, we don’t need that much of water,” he said explaining that the water was needed for the wash basin and toilets on board.

Rajesh also said AirAsia India has started monitoring the wastage of plastic water bottles and AirAsia Bhd Malaysia is soon to introduce the same initiative of its own.

He also said that, even before the ‘go green’ campaign, AirAsia made efforts to save environment and mentions:

Four years ago, we started the practice of switching off one engine when we are taxiing. We realize that we did not need two engines for that and this has helped us to reduce our carbon emissions as well and AirAsia in Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines were following suit.

According to Rajesh, aviation industry is far from the leading culprit when it comes to global pollution via greenhouse gases, as it only contributes 12 per cent of global emissions.