SIA launches regular ‘green’ flights from Los Angeles to Singapore

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

These come under the ‘ASPIRE-Daily City Pair’ programme, which aims to deliver gate-to-gate environmental best practices for pairs of airports throughout the 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 will 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, employed enhanced gate-to-gate air traffic management operational procedures to reduce fuel burn and carbon emissions in all phases of the flight.

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,” says 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.

The ASPIRE partners are Airways New Zealand, the United States Federal Aviation Administration, Airservices Australia, Japan Civil Aviation Bureau and Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore.

Singapore Airlines Cargo to launch Kansai Services

Singapore Airlines Cargo is to  operate twice weekly Boeing 747-400 freighter services to Kansai Airport in Japan via Hong Kong with effect from 13 May till 29 October 2011.

Cargo capacity generated by the freighter will complement the belly hold space available in Singapore Airlines’ daily passenger services between Singapore and Kansai.

The Kansai region is home to many manufacturing bases of LCD panels, semiconductors, solar battery panels and lithium-ion batteries.

“This service is in line with our policy of matching capacity with demand and we look forward to the support of our customers,” said Mr Tan Tiow Kor, Senior Vice President Sales and Marketing.