Emirates Plans Cross-Polar Green Flight

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Dec 11th 2008 at 9:02AM

Luxury airline, Emirates may be slow to jump on the green bandwagon but now the airline is trying to do eco-friendly in a rather dramatic way. On December 15 Emirates Airline will undertake what they call the Environment flight, which they are saying is the world's first cross-polar green flight heading from Dubai to San Francisco. Emirates is working with government agencies in Dubai, Russia, Canada and the United States to plot the most environmentally-sophisticated trip possible to save fuel and carbon emissions on the 16-hour non-stop service.

The airline will fly the Boeing 777-200LR to service the San Francisco-Dubai route. To ensure a more fuel-efficient route, the flight will utilize new corridors of Russian airspace. The EK225 Emvironment flight will depart Dubai at 8:55 a.m.on 15th December and land in San Francisco at 1 p.m. local time the same day. The fuel and emissions savings features including washing the plane before the flight to minimize drag, using electrical power on the ground in Dubai rather than running its auxiliary power unit, getting priority clearance from Dubai Air Traffic control and real time updates of current weather and wind conditions to allow the flight crew to modify their flight path on route. The flight will track close to the North Pole and flexible routings will be pursued over Canadian airspace. Sounds more like clever than green to me but it sounds like those passengers are going to great some great views of the icy north.

Tags: airlines, emirates

Filed under: Wings, Green

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Justin Dec 12th 2008 11:57AM

"Sounds more like clever than green to me"
This phrase alone is beyond disgusting.
While there is nothing wrong with being green. There is everything wrong to have the slightest notion that using green propaganda excuses to be more profitable is wrong.
Profitability should always come before being green within the context of the law.