Within months of introducing the “green fare”, to allow passengers to offset CO2 emissions during air travel Switzerland’s Swiss International Airlines has seen 3% of travellers keen to purchase them.
“Three percent of our total passengers purchased green fares to compensate for their flying,” the airline’s CEO, Dieter Vranckx, told The Hindu recently at an industry event in Istanbul. “The interest is across the board, and across all age groups though we need to assess the trends over a longer period as the fare category was only launched in the first quarter of this year,” he added.
The Lufthansa Group, of which Swiss International Airlines is a part, introduced the “green fares” in February, to allow customers to fly more sustainably by purchasing a special fare that includes offsetting of flight-related CO2 emissions, which is achieved by using 20% Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF)and 80% by contributing to high-quality climate protection projects.
Customers can also avail additional benefits such as status miles and a free rebooking option, the Swiss airline told reporters during a presentation at its operations facility in Zurich..
The green fares are being offered by Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, SWISS, Edelweiss, Eurowings Discover and Air Dolomiti on more than 7,30,000 flights per year within Europe, and to Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.
The product is also available for corporate customers who receive a CO2 mitigation certificate for the CO2 reduction achieved with the SAF.
The Lufthansa Group aims to achieve net zero goal by 2050, and halve its net carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 from the emissions level in 2019 through a three-pronged strategy, which includes improving operational efficiency by modernising its fleet, adoption of SAF as well as investing in climate protection projects.
The group is also adopting technological hardware such as AeroSHARK, which is a film coating whose ribbed texture mimics sharkskin and helps reduce friction as well as improve lift when attached to aircraft wings. The technology has been developed by Lufthansa Technik, a subsidiary of Lufthansa Group that provides maintenance, repair and overhaul services, and BASF, the largest chemical producer in the world.
(The correspondent was in Switzerland at the invitation of Switzerland Tourism)
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