Three years ago, SkyTeam inaugurated the Aviation Challenge, the industry’s first competition of its kind to encourage innovation and action that can help reduce the impact of flying. To take its mission even further, the alliance has opened the Challenge to non-SkyTeam airlines for the very first time.
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This year, SkyTeam is uniting 24 global airlines – including newest member Virgin Atlantic and future member SAS – in a shared ambition to discover and implement ideas that have the potential to reduce air travel’s environmental impact. And in a first for the leisure travel market, non-SkyTeam affiliated airlines TUI Airline and Corendon Dutch Airlines will also take part.
Participating airlines commit to sharing their learnings and best-practices to help further industry-wide change. Since the launch of the first Challenge in 2022, 465 different solutions have been generated by participating airlines to help reduce CO2 emissions across all areas of airline operations, such as: increasing the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), flight path optimization, waste reduction and cargo handling, amongst others. While the first two Challenges focused on finding new ideas, The Aviation Challenge is now focused on putting these solutions into practice to show how they might be effectively scaled and rolled-out across the wider industry.
For this year’s Challenge, airlines will focus on scaling solutions from the first two Challenges across their entire operations. Participants can operate a showcase flight to demonstrate how they have implemented and integrated previously generated ideas. Virgin Atlantic will share key learnings from its Flight100, the first flight to be powered 100% using sustainable aviation fuel.
The submissions will be analyzed by a diverse judging panel of global sustainability and aviation experts, awarding those that best demonstrate the impact and the scale of the solutions implemented. The criteria have been developed in partnership with leading aerospace experts including PA Consulting and the Royal Netherlands Aerospace Center (NLR). The 72 flights operated as part of last year’s Challenge delivered an average improvement of 19% in CO2 intensity compared to the same flights operated the previous month, eliminating 30 tons of emissions.
Aviation Challenge 2024 participants
The airlines participating in The Aviation Challenge this year are: Aerolineas Argentinas, Aeromexico, Air Europa, Air Europa Express, Air France, China Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, Corendon Dutch Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Endeavor Air, Garuda Indonesia, JamboJet, Kenya Airways, KLM, KLM Cityhopper, Korean Air, SAS Scandinavian Airlines, Saudia, Shanghai Airlines, TAROM, TUI Airline, Vietnam Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and XiamenAir.
About the Aviation Challenge
The Aviation Challenge (TAC) exists to challenge the aviation industry by stimulating and accelerating innovation towards a sustainable future. TAC was first presented in 2022 by SkyTeam, a leading airline alliance with member carriers around the world. This year’s challenge is scheduled between 1 August and 28 October in which 24 participating airlines will implement their most sustainable solutions and compete for awards in 18 categories. This challenge – including flight and ground operations – is another step in the aviation industry’s path towards a more sustainable future.