Greener Flights from Los Angeles to Singapore Launched

The Asia and Pacific Initiative to Reduce Emissions (ASPIRE) partnership is launching regular ‘green’ flights across Asia and the Pacific.

The flights come under the ‘ASPIRE-Daily City Pair’ programme, which aims to deliver gate-to-gate environmental best practices for pairs of airports throughout Asia Pacific, one of the fastest growing aviation markets in the world. The first daily ‘city pair’ flight was launched between Auckland and San Francisco on 21 February 2011. More of such ‘city pair’ flights are expected to be implemented over the next few months by ASPIRE partners.

On 16 May 2011, the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) and Singapore Airlines (SIA), working together with the United States Federal Aviation Administration and the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, launched the second regular ‘city pair’ - Los Angeles (LAX) to Singapore (SIN) - flight.

SIA flight SQ37, which operates non-stop from Los Angeles to Singapore, is employing enhanced gate-to-gate air traffic management operational procedures to reduce fuel burn and carbon emissions in all phases of the flight.

Mr Yap Ong Heng, Director-General of CAAS, said, “CAAS aims to actively contribute to reducing aviation’s environmental footprint where we can. Hence, our participation in the ‘ASPIRE-Daily City Pair’ programme, with the launch of the LAX-SIN ‘city-pair’ with SIA. This will clearly demonstrate how collaboration among ASPIRE partners, airlines and other Air Navigation Service Providers in employing best practices and technologies in air traffic management can achieve significant reductions in fuel consumption and carbon emissions for flights.”

The following air traffic management best practices, which significantly reduce fuel burn and carbon emissions, will be utilised for the LAX-SIN ‘green’ flight:

- ‘User-Preferred Routes’, ‘Dynamic Airborne Reroute Procedures’ and ‘30/30 Reduced Oceanic Separation’, which allow pilots to take full advantage of atmospheric conditions, such as prevailing winds, to reduce separation between aircraft and shorten flight time;

- ‘Time-Based Arrivals Management’ and ‘Arrivals Optimisation’ which allow aircraft to fly with engines set at idle mode in continuous descent from a high altitude during the landing phase of the flight, thus reducing fuel burn.

“We are pleased to be able to implement these flight procedures on a regular basis, and see this as yet another step towards greener skies. We will be monitoring the flight closely to track the fuel and emission savings, but we expect to reduce fuel burn by 2 tonnes and achieve carbon emission savings of around 6.3 tonnes for each Los Angeles-Singapore sector,” said Singapore Airlines’ Senior Vice-President Flight Operations Gerard Yeap.

Each ‘ASPIRE-Daily City Pair’ is star-rated based on the number of best practice procedures employed, with three stars representing the minimum required and five stars indicating that all identified best practices are employed. The LAX-SIN ‘city pair’ is assigned a 4-star rating.

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