Etihad Airways teams with Boeing on “Greenliner” which will include biofuel flights

In the UAE, Etihad Airways and Boeing announced a first-of-its-kind ‘eco partnership’, in which a specially-themed Boeing 787 Dreamliner will be used to test products, procedures and initiatives designed to reduce aircraft carbon emissions.

The ‘Etihad Greenliner’, to be introduced early next year, will be used by both companies to explore and assess environmental sustainability initiatives while the aircraft operates scheduled services across the airline’s network. Other stakeholders, from equipment suppliers to airspace regulators, will be invited to join the companies in advancing and testing efficiency measures on or with the ‘Greenliner’.

Etihad also announced that it would operate a Boeing 787 ‘eco flight’ from Abu Dhabi to Brussels during Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week in January 2020, incorporating a wide range of environment-focused initiatives.

The new partnership between Etihad and Boeing builds upon their existing membership of Abu Dhabi’s Sustainable Bioenergy Research Consortium (SBRC), an academic and industrial cooperative whose members also include Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), and the specialist technology groups Safran and Bauer Resources.

The SBRC is working to develop commercial quantities of biofuel from saltwater-tolerant plants, and the first commercial service to use this fuel was an Etihad Boeing 787 flight from Abu Dhabi to Amsterdam in January this year. More such flights are planned using the new ‘Etihad Greenliner’.