Virgin Atlantic Research Paper
APPROACHES FOR SUSTAINABLE AVIATION
INTRODUCTION
Although the aviation industry has contributed to economic sustainability, it has been long criticized to be one main reason of environmental degradation. With problems like fuel consumption, aircraft noise, air quality relevant emission, and other emission during flight travel, etc., the industry is referred as ‘dirty’ industry. The airline giant Virgin Atlantic takes the leading role on the war against carbon. As the director of customer experience at Virgin Atlantic said, although value of money and product quality are critical issues to take into consideration, the passengers of Virgin Atlantic expect more than that. Environmental sustainability has been concerned by more and more people …show more content…
lately and this drive the company to make improvements in this aspect.
Virgin Atlantic’s improvements in achieving environmental sustainability are made in three areas - reduction in carbon emission, reduce/reuse/recycle of waste, and cooperation with sustainable suppliers. As leading aviation company, the first prior mission in environment sustainability is reduction in carbon emissions, for which the company aims to achieve a reduction of 30 percent between 2007 and 2020 (Virgin-Atlantic 2015). Virgin Atlantic also work hard in pushing the establish of climate change framework in global scale. In past decade, many environmental strategies have been implemented by the company including low carbon fuel alternatives and advanced technologies, all these helped the company to meet their environmental targets.
AVIATION ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
For a long time the aviation industry has been blamed for its contribution to climate change and global warming.
While as a efficient travel method, plane flight journey is associated with problems including carbon and heat emission, loud noises, and producing of particulates and gases. European Commission reveals that from 1990 to 2006, the increasing rate of gas emissions from aviation industry is as high as 87 percent. Further more, the rapid growth of aviation industry make the environmental problems even worse. Take figures of 2014 for examples, the occupied seats of the year is 3 billion, which doubled the number of 1999, and the U.S. airlines alone has used 16.2 billion gallons of aviation …show more content…
fuel.
Both public and aviation industry professionals have aware that changes should take place in the industry. However, although everyone in the industry understand the urgent need for change, not too much has been done by most airline companies. The root reason for this is that leaders in this industry worried that no cheap and efficient technology can be provided to replace conventional methods. It is more than often that economists and environmentalists always give different opinions, as they all try to achieve goals in their own realm at the expense of the other. For the effective and efficient sustainable strategies, aviation industry leaders should deliberately consider the balance between money efficiency and environmental sustainability. SUSTAINABLE APPROACHES OF VIRGIN ATLANTIC
Virgin Atlantic has take the responsibility as leading role in the forefront of carbon fight.
The company sets goal of sustainable aviation and have introduced number of strategies to reduce environmental footprints and improve operation efficiency. As sir Richard Branson claimed (2006), although the aviation industry contributed in economic sustainability, the fact that aviation resulted in numbers of environmental issues should not be neglected, thus the company would work hard in reducing environmental impact of aviation industry.
On Virgin Atlantic website, the company conclude their environmental strategies in three main areas: carbon, waste, and buying.
CARBON
Carbon emission is aviation company’s most important environmental issue. The company goal is to reduce carbon emission per flying mile by 30 percent by the year of 2020. This target will be achieved with more efficient aircraft, fuel efficient technologies, alternative aviation fuel, and efficient flaying
plan.
Efficient Aircraft
Virgin Atlantic has cooperated with aircraft manufacture Boeing to design and manufacture a more efficient air plane for Virgin. This new design of aircrafts, Dreamliner 787-9, can reduce gas emissions by 27 percent. While the carry capacity of this airplane has increased to 290 passengers, the plane is much lighter because of new composite materials. Through engines redesign the new model reduces noise emission by 60 percent compare to the A series Boeing. The passengers also benefits from the new efficient model of aircraft due to cut in ticket fares and improved cabin conditions.
Starting Grid
‘Starting Grid’ is a sustainable scheme that introduced to Virgin Atlantic in 2006, it is used in aircraft departure. The working principle of this approach is using tug to tow departing airplane to the ‘holding area’ close to the runway. The engine of aircraft will not work until the aircraft is awaiting for take off in the starting grid. This can largely reduct the operation time of aircraft engines and reduce carbon emission. After implementation, this scheme greatly improved airport efficiency as well as reduce 90 percent of carbon emission before take off. The carbon emission is expected to further reduce in flight journey as the scheme allows aircraft to carry less fuel and hence reduce weight during flight.
Carbon Offsetting
By this strategy Virgin Atlantic make their customers to be involved in the company’s sustainable program by offer them opportunities to offset carbon emissions of their flight journey. As most passengers are now aware of the fact that each flight journey inevitable resulted in carbon emission, the airline company encourage them to make donation to sustainable development scheme, e.g. forest protecting project, to offset environment footprint of their flight. Although fight traveling has rapidly increased in past years, this strategy has successfully generated some carbon neutral flights.
It is true that aviation industry has contributed to numbers of environmental problem, especially in relevance with carbon emission, but consider that air flight is the most efficient way of traveling on this planet and the industry has made significant economic and social benefits, it is unrealistic to charge more in ticket price to compensate the environmental cost. The Carbon Offsetting plan thus is a effective way to eliminating aviation environment impacts.
It is argued that offsetting all carbon emission of Virgin Atlantic is impossible to be done due to the large amount of carbon dioxide emission, but passengers’ voluntary donation, we will say, is a good start.
Continuous Descent Approach
This approach is the result of collective working of Virgin Atlantic and NASA, and used to improve landing efficiency of aircraft. Before the approach, the landing of aircraft involve series of descent procedures and resulted in inefficiency of burning fuel. This new method of landing making aircraft to start descent in much earlier stage of the flight plan at a more fuel efficient speed, hence reduce using of fuel before landing. NASA’s research shows that this change in landing procedures can save up to 200 kg of fuel per landing (2005).
Unfortunately, this approach is not suitable for incoming flights in busy airport such as Gatwick and Heathrow because of the limited airspace near these airports. Thus this approach raise the need for Europe to change to a more efficient traffic control system, which would not only improving aircraft landing efficiency but also improve aviation environmental impact.
Sustainable Fuel
In the winter of 2011, Sir Richard Branson claimed that ‘green aviation fuel’ is going to be introduced to the Virgin Atlantic as replacement of current aviation fuel, and this is expected to be a important breakthrough in environmental sustainability (Meikle, 2011). The plan is to use waste gases from steel production as aircraft propulsion, and aims to reduce one fifth of global usage of aviation fuel. This has two-fold positive influences on environmental sustainability: firstly, the wast gas has no other use and is used to be emitted into the atmosphere, and compare to biofuel project, this plan will not result lands problems. Secondly, this solution is sustainable as there will be more than sufficient supply of wast gas. The FOE organization (Friends of the Earth) consider the idea to be very exiting and promising. This solution of aviation fuel is sustainable and can be expanded into many other industries, also the production costs would be lower than traditional aviation fuel. The partners of this new plan includes low-carbon development firm LanzaTech, aircraft manufacture Boeing and Swedis Fuels. The Roundtable for Sustainable Biofules (RSB) provides guidelines to ensure the production process in compliance with environmental and social criteria. This low carbon fuel can make 50 percent reduce in carbon emission and expect to change the ‘dirty’ industry to ‘clean’ industry.
Weight Loss of Aircraft
Weight loss is an effective way to reduce emission during flight, so the company has introduced number of strategies to reduce weight of aircraft. The change of cargo bins and pallets to lighter ones is expecting to save about 2000 tonnes of carbon emission (Virgin Atlantic). In fact, the company has been continually working to reducing weight in all possible aspects, from lighter blanket to redesigned glass tumbler. The figure shows that these weight loss changes has successfully reduced 480 tonnes of carbon emission in 2013.
Renewable Energy Sources on Ground Operation
For the ground operation of Virgin Atlantic, main sustainable strategy is using of renewable energy. As major ground operations of the company is located in UK, the electricity Virgin Atlantic using in the UK is provided by renewable sources such as wind-blade, hydro-electric and biomass power. The company also upgrade its lighting and IT systems to improve efficiency of operation and reduce energy consumption.
WASTE
Virgin Atlantic developed a ‘3Rs’ waste management method, which refer to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. And lately in year 2014, the term recovery is added in the situation where recycling is not possible.
For the UK office waste, between 2008 and 2013, the total amount of waste reduced by 20 percent, and the figure is targeting at 50 percent by the year of 2015. 82 percent of these waste are not sent to landfill but to recycling site or recovery facility. The company reduced food waste in staff catering, and in the refurbishment of facility, up to 90 percent of the old materials is re-used. Also, in UK office the company divided waste into ‘food’ and ‘everything else’, while food waste is used to producing biogas, the ‘everything else’ part is mostly recycled.
However, aircraft waste in most cased can not be recycled due to ICW regulations. In order to reduce aircraft waste, Virgin Atlantic has been working with MNH Sustainable Cabin Services for years to develop efficient strategies. In year 2013, with help of MNH the company rescued and recycled more than 455 tonnes of waste. Number of effective strategies have been implemented, for example, the new salvage method of ‘dry stores’ products has proved to be a effective way of reducing cabin waste. Cooperation with new catering supplier Gate Gourmet on the other hand resulted in reduction of catering waste and environmental impact. And the sustainable report of Virgin Atlantic also stated that in 2013, nearly 14 tonnes of cabin crew uniforms had been recycled.
BUYING
As one of the largest airline company, Virgin Atlantic deal with 5000 suppliers around the world. In recent years, the company has increasing awareness of the importance of addressing sustainable issues through its supply chain. The development of ‘Sustainable Procurement Policy’ is aim to set up criteria for suppliers, and all new and renewing suppliers are asked to sign up. The company has identified high expenditure and risk areas, and seek more effective and efficient cooperation relationships. Such areas include fuel suppliers, aircraft leasing and engineering, and aircraft maintenance. To do so, collective works across different departments are needed in decision making process, so a series of cross-departmental workshops has employed to address the concerning issues.
CONCLUSION
For most airline companies, the most important reason stops them pursuing environmental sustainability is that profitability will always be the fist concern of company shareholders. The environmental sustainability implementation in most cases need the compromise of the goal of maximum profit. However, management leaders should consider that environmental commitment and social responsibilities can also benefit the business’s long term development. For example, study reveals that concern of environment can largely impact customer preferences and loyalty and improve company brand image (Maignan and Ferrell, 2004). Further more, as many sustainability strategies of Virgin Atlantic Airline also improved cost efficiency, the company has shown that environmental sustainability can be achieved without the price of profitability.
Reference List
1. <Climate Change: Commission Proposes Bringing Air Transport into EU Emissions Trading Scheme>, (Press release). EU press release. 2006-12-20. Retrieved 2008-01-02.
2. <Change is in the Air Sustainability Report 2014>, www.virgin-atlantic.com (access 29th May 2015)
3. Meikle, J. 2011 <Virgin Atlantic Unveils Plan to Use ‘Green’ Fuel>, The Guardian, 11 October 2011
4. Walsh, B. (2007) <Greenhouse Airlines>, Time, Vol.169, Iss.7, pg.57
5. Cooper, R. N., (2000) <International approaches to global climate change>, The World Bank Research Observer, Vol.15, Iss.2, pg.145
6. Davis, T. H. (2006) <The Price of being Green>, at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-1895762,00.html (access 29th May 2015)
7. Maignan, I. & Ferrell, O.C., (2004) <Corporate Social Responsibility and Marketing: An integrative Framework>, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Volume 32, No.1, pp3-19
8. Andrew Clark (2006) Virgin Atlantic to tackle environmental impact, at http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1725771,00.html (access 29th May 2015)
INTRODUCTION
Although the aviation industry has contributed to economic sustainability, it has been long criticized to be one main reason of environmental degradation. With problems like fuel consumption, aircraft noise, air quality relevant emission, and other emission during flight travel, etc., the industry is referred as ‘dirty’ industry. The airline giant Virgin Atlantic takes the leading role on the war against carbon. As the director of customer experience at Virgin Atlantic said, although value of money and product quality are critical issues to take into consideration, the passengers of Virgin Atlantic expect more than that. Environmental sustainability has been concerned by more and more people …show more content…
lately and this drive the company to make improvements in this aspect.
Virgin Atlantic’s improvements in achieving environmental sustainability are made in three areas - reduction in carbon emission, reduce/reuse/recycle of waste, and cooperation with sustainable suppliers. As leading aviation company, the first prior mission in environment sustainability is reduction in carbon emissions, for which the company aims to achieve a reduction of 30 percent between 2007 and 2020 (Virgin-Atlantic 2015). Virgin Atlantic also work hard in pushing the establish of climate change framework in global scale. In past decade, many environmental strategies have been implemented by the company including low carbon fuel alternatives and advanced technologies, all these helped the company to meet their environmental targets.
AVIATION ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
For a long time the aviation industry has been blamed for its contribution to climate change and global warming.
While as a efficient travel method, plane flight journey is associated with problems including carbon and heat emission, loud noises, and producing of particulates and gases. European Commission reveals that from 1990 to 2006, the increasing rate of gas emissions from aviation industry is as high as 87 percent. Further more, the rapid growth of aviation industry make the environmental problems even worse. Take figures of 2014 for examples, the occupied seats of the year is 3 billion, which doubled the number of 1999, and the U.S. airlines alone has used 16.2 billion gallons of aviation …show more content…
fuel.
Both public and aviation industry professionals have aware that changes should take place in the industry. However, although everyone in the industry understand the urgent need for change, not too much has been done by most airline companies. The root reason for this is that leaders in this industry worried that no cheap and efficient technology can be provided to replace conventional methods. It is more than often that economists and environmentalists always give different opinions, as they all try to achieve goals in their own realm at the expense of the other. For the effective and efficient sustainable strategies, aviation industry leaders should deliberately consider the balance between money efficiency and environmental sustainability. SUSTAINABLE APPROACHES OF VIRGIN ATLANTIC
Virgin Atlantic has take the responsibility as leading role in the forefront of carbon fight.
The company sets goal of sustainable aviation and have introduced number of strategies to reduce environmental footprints and improve operation efficiency. As sir Richard Branson claimed (2006), although the aviation industry contributed in economic sustainability, the fact that aviation resulted in numbers of environmental issues should not be neglected, thus the company would work hard in reducing environmental impact of aviation industry.
On Virgin Atlantic website, the company conclude their environmental strategies in three main areas: carbon, waste, and buying.
CARBON
Carbon emission is aviation company’s most important environmental issue. The company goal is to reduce carbon emission per flying mile by 30 percent by the year of 2020. This target will be achieved with more efficient aircraft, fuel efficient technologies, alternative aviation fuel, and efficient flaying
plan.
Efficient Aircraft
Virgin Atlantic has cooperated with aircraft manufacture Boeing to design and manufacture a more efficient air plane for Virgin. This new design of aircrafts, Dreamliner 787-9, can reduce gas emissions by 27 percent. While the carry capacity of this airplane has increased to 290 passengers, the plane is much lighter because of new composite materials. Through engines redesign the new model reduces noise emission by 60 percent compare to the A series Boeing. The passengers also benefits from the new efficient model of aircraft due to cut in ticket fares and improved cabin conditions.
Starting Grid
‘Starting Grid’ is a sustainable scheme that introduced to Virgin Atlantic in 2006, it is used in aircraft departure. The working principle of this approach is using tug to tow departing airplane to the ‘holding area’ close to the runway. The engine of aircraft will not work until the aircraft is awaiting for take off in the starting grid. This can largely reduct the operation time of aircraft engines and reduce carbon emission. After implementation, this scheme greatly improved airport efficiency as well as reduce 90 percent of carbon emission before take off. The carbon emission is expected to further reduce in flight journey as the scheme allows aircraft to carry less fuel and hence reduce weight during flight.
Carbon Offsetting
By this strategy Virgin Atlantic make their customers to be involved in the company’s sustainable program by offer them opportunities to offset carbon emissions of their flight journey. As most passengers are now aware of the fact that each flight journey inevitable resulted in carbon emission, the airline company encourage them to make donation to sustainable development scheme, e.g. forest protecting project, to offset environment footprint of their flight. Although fight traveling has rapidly increased in past years, this strategy has successfully generated some carbon neutral flights.
It is true that aviation industry has contributed to numbers of environmental problem, especially in relevance with carbon emission, but consider that air flight is the most efficient way of traveling on this planet and the industry has made significant economic and social benefits, it is unrealistic to charge more in ticket price to compensate the environmental cost. The Carbon Offsetting plan thus is a effective way to eliminating aviation environment impacts.
It is argued that offsetting all carbon emission of Virgin Atlantic is impossible to be done due to the large amount of carbon dioxide emission, but passengers’ voluntary donation, we will say, is a good start.
Continuous Descent Approach
This approach is the result of collective working of Virgin Atlantic and NASA, and used to improve landing efficiency of aircraft. Before the approach, the landing of aircraft involve series of descent procedures and resulted in inefficiency of burning fuel. This new method of landing making aircraft to start descent in much earlier stage of the flight plan at a more fuel efficient speed, hence reduce using of fuel before landing. NASA’s research shows that this change in landing procedures can save up to 200 kg of fuel per landing (2005).
Unfortunately, this approach is not suitable for incoming flights in busy airport such as Gatwick and Heathrow because of the limited airspace near these airports. Thus this approach raise the need for Europe to change to a more efficient traffic control system, which would not only improving aircraft landing efficiency but also improve aviation environmental impact.
Sustainable Fuel
In the winter of 2011, Sir Richard Branson claimed that ‘green aviation fuel’ is going to be introduced to the Virgin Atlantic as replacement of current aviation fuel, and this is expected to be a important breakthrough in environmental sustainability (Meikle, 2011). The plan is to use waste gases from steel production as aircraft propulsion, and aims to reduce one fifth of global usage of aviation fuel. This has two-fold positive influences on environmental sustainability: firstly, the wast gas has no other use and is used to be emitted into the atmosphere, and compare to biofuel project, this plan will not result lands problems. Secondly, this solution is sustainable as there will be more than sufficient supply of wast gas. The FOE organization (Friends of the Earth) consider the idea to be very exiting and promising. This solution of aviation fuel is sustainable and can be expanded into many other industries, also the production costs would be lower than traditional aviation fuel. The partners of this new plan includes low-carbon development firm LanzaTech, aircraft manufacture Boeing and Swedis Fuels. The Roundtable for Sustainable Biofules (RSB) provides guidelines to ensure the production process in compliance with environmental and social criteria. This low carbon fuel can make 50 percent reduce in carbon emission and expect to change the ‘dirty’ industry to ‘clean’ industry.
Weight Loss of Aircraft
Weight loss is an effective way to reduce emission during flight, so the company has introduced number of strategies to reduce weight of aircraft. The change of cargo bins and pallets to lighter ones is expecting to save about 2000 tonnes of carbon emission (Virgin Atlantic). In fact, the company has been continually working to reducing weight in all possible aspects, from lighter blanket to redesigned glass tumbler. The figure shows that these weight loss changes has successfully reduced 480 tonnes of carbon emission in 2013.
Renewable Energy Sources on Ground Operation
For the ground operation of Virgin Atlantic, main sustainable strategy is using of renewable energy. As major ground operations of the company is located in UK, the electricity Virgin Atlantic using in the UK is provided by renewable sources such as wind-blade, hydro-electric and biomass power. The company also upgrade its lighting and IT systems to improve efficiency of operation and reduce energy consumption.
WASTE
Virgin Atlantic developed a ‘3Rs’ waste management method, which refer to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. And lately in year 2014, the term recovery is added in the situation where recycling is not possible.
For the UK office waste, between 2008 and 2013, the total amount of waste reduced by 20 percent, and the figure is targeting at 50 percent by the year of 2015. 82 percent of these waste are not sent to landfill but to recycling site or recovery facility. The company reduced food waste in staff catering, and in the refurbishment of facility, up to 90 percent of the old materials is re-used. Also, in UK office the company divided waste into ‘food’ and ‘everything else’, while food waste is used to producing biogas, the ‘everything else’ part is mostly recycled.
However, aircraft waste in most cased can not be recycled due to ICW regulations. In order to reduce aircraft waste, Virgin Atlantic has been working with MNH Sustainable Cabin Services for years to develop efficient strategies. In year 2013, with help of MNH the company rescued and recycled more than 455 tonnes of waste. Number of effective strategies have been implemented, for example, the new salvage method of ‘dry stores’ products has proved to be a effective way of reducing cabin waste. Cooperation with new catering supplier Gate Gourmet on the other hand resulted in reduction of catering waste and environmental impact. And the sustainable report of Virgin Atlantic also stated that in 2013, nearly 14 tonnes of cabin crew uniforms had been recycled.
BUYING
As one of the largest airline company, Virgin Atlantic deal with 5000 suppliers around the world. In recent years, the company has increasing awareness of the importance of addressing sustainable issues through its supply chain. The development of ‘Sustainable Procurement Policy’ is aim to set up criteria for suppliers, and all new and renewing suppliers are asked to sign up. The company has identified high expenditure and risk areas, and seek more effective and efficient cooperation relationships. Such areas include fuel suppliers, aircraft leasing and engineering, and aircraft maintenance. To do so, collective works across different departments are needed in decision making process, so a series of cross-departmental workshops has employed to address the concerning issues.
CONCLUSION
For most airline companies, the most important reason stops them pursuing environmental sustainability is that profitability will always be the fist concern of company shareholders. The environmental sustainability implementation in most cases need the compromise of the goal of maximum profit. However, management leaders should consider that environmental commitment and social responsibilities can also benefit the business’s long term development. For example, study reveals that concern of environment can largely impact customer preferences and loyalty and improve company brand image (Maignan and Ferrell, 2004). Further more, as many sustainability strategies of Virgin Atlantic Airline also improved cost efficiency, the company has shown that environmental sustainability can be achieved without the price of profitability.
Reference List
1. <Climate Change: Commission Proposes Bringing Air Transport into EU Emissions Trading Scheme>, (Press release). EU press release. 2006-12-20. Retrieved 2008-01-02.
2. <Change is in the Air Sustainability Report 2014>, www.virgin-atlantic.com (access 29th May 2015)
3. Meikle, J. 2011 <Virgin Atlantic Unveils Plan to Use ‘Green’ Fuel>, The Guardian, 11 October 2011
4. Walsh, B. (2007) <Greenhouse Airlines>, Time, Vol.169, Iss.7, pg.57
5. Cooper, R. N., (2000) <International approaches to global climate change>, The World Bank Research Observer, Vol.15, Iss.2, pg.145
6. Davis, T. H. (2006) <The Price of being Green>, at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-1895762,00.html (access 29th May 2015)
7. Maignan, I. & Ferrell, O.C., (2004) <Corporate Social Responsibility and Marketing: An integrative Framework>, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Volume 32, No.1, pp3-19
8. Andrew Clark (2006) Virgin Atlantic to tackle environmental impact, at http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1725771,00.html (access 29th May 2015)