Etihad EcoDemonstrator goes TransCon
While electric flying gets most of the press these days, we shouldn’t forget that, as far as green flying in concerned, there are also a number of initiatives that aim to make existing commercial aircraft more environmentally friendly.
One of the most prominent initiatives in this field is that of Etihad and Boeing with the Boeing 787 ecoDemonstrator. This is a programme that aims to test a whole range of new technologies that aim to make commercial aviation more sustainable.
This summer has seen several such flights in the US. From Boeing’s facilities near Seattle, a factory-new Etihad Boeing 787-10 has conducted a number of flights to several different destinations throughout America, with some environmentally-friendly technologies onboard.
In addition to Etihad and Boeing, the programme includes also some other industrial partners, such as French aerospace company Safran or fuel suppliers World Energy and EPIC, as well as NASA.
Some of the technologies that have been put to test during these ecoDemonstrator flights:
“Tailored arrival management”, that is a new system to optimize the plane’s route path in order to consume less fuel use, produce less emissions and become quieter
A quieter landing gear produced by Safran Landing Systems (apparently 25% of noise during landing is produced by the landing gear!)
Also, on the noise front, the ecoDemonstrator Dreamliner had a 1,000 microphone array installed, one of the largest and most complex ever designed and assembled, according to the firms involved and they measure noise data during different stages of the flight and in different conditions (this microphone array was dismantled after the Boeing 787-10 flew back to Seattle from Glasgow, Montana, and ahead of its next flight to Charleston, South Carolina, more on this other trip in the next point).
50% biofuel blend (the maximum legally permitted) produced from inedible agricultural waste. The flight was actually a TransCon between Boeing’s own facilities in Washington state and in South Carolina.
Much in line with the Zeitgeist of our times, some systems for cabin disinfection were also tested, I guess we’ll see much more of this in the coming months.