SkyTeam Expands Environmental Initiative with The Aviation Challenge

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SkyTeam launched The Sustainable Flight Challenge three years ago, marking the industry’s first competition aimed at promoting innovation and action to reduce the environmental impact of flying. Now, SkyTeam has rebranded this groundbreaking initiative as The Aviation Challenge, reflecting its broader vision to drive meaningful change across the aviation sector. This year, for the first time, the alliance has opened the Challenge to non-SkyTeam airlines.

SkyTeam is uniting 24 global airlines, including its newest member Virgin Atlantic and future member SAS, in a shared ambition to discover and implement ideas that can reduce air travel’s environmental impact. Additionally, in a first for the leisure travel market, non-SkyTeam affiliated airlines TUI Airline and Corendon Dutch Airlines will also take part in this ambitious initiative.

“By scaling up and implementing solutions generated in previous years and widening its scope, we expect The Aviation Challenge to realize increased potential to reduce flying’s environmental impact, helping participants to further their own sustainability goals. While we await greater production of SAF and the future technology our industry needs, The Aviation Challenge is bringing together global airlines and stakeholders from across aviation in a proactive stance to help address the environmental impact of flying.”

Participating airlines in The Aviation Challenge are committed to sharing their learnings and best practices to drive industry-wide change. Since the launch of the first challenge in 2022, 465 innovative solutions have been generated by these airlines to reduce CO2 emissions across various aspects of airline operations. These solutions include increasing the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), optimizing flight paths, reducing waste, and improving cargo handling.

While the initial challenges focused on discovering new ideas, The Aviation Challenge now aims to implement these solutions and demonstrate their scalability across the wider industry. This year, participating airlines will focus on integrating solutions from the previous challenges into their entire operations. They have the option to operate a showcase flight to demonstrate how they have successfully implemented these innovations. For instance, Virgin Atlantic will share key insights from its Flight100, the first flight powered entirely by sustainable aviation fuel.

A diverse panel of global sustainability and aviation experts will analyze the submissions, awarding those that best demonstrate the impact and scalability of the implemented solutions. The criteria for judging 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 achieved an average improvement of 19% in CO2 intensity compared to the same flights operated the previous month, eliminating 30 tons of emissions. More information about the impact of SkyTeam’s 2023 challenge can be found here.

This year’s participating airlines include 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.