This summer Swiss are becoming the first passenger airline to use AeroSHARK technology on aircraft. These aerodynamic 'riblets' will reduce fuel usage by 1.1% - good news on an industry level! What does this mean for passengers who want to offset their CO2 from flying?
Swiss is applying the AeroSHARK film to their fleet of 12 Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, which usually fly long haul routes like ZRH-SFO. For passengers, this adds another dimension of uncertainty to their CO2 calculation. No only do we need to know the start, destination, stopovers, airline, aircraft, load-factor and seating class of the passenger, we now also need to know whether the aircraft was fitted with AeroSHARK!
However, in the battle against CO2 emission uncertainties, this is not a big one. Swiss Boeing 777-300ERs are fitted with 320 seats, so a 1.1% AeroSHARK induced CO2 variation is equivalent to only 3.5 empty seats. Flight durations of LX38 ZRH-SFO in the last week varied between 10h44 and 11h09, or 3.8% (flightradar24, accessed 2022-07-01). 1.1% of the great circle distance of 9399 km is just 104 km, easily swallowed by different route choices and weather over the North Atlantic.
While AeroSHARK is a small step toward reducing industry emissions, for passengers it's another source of uncertainty when trying to calculate their CO2 responsibility. Emission calculators should reflect this!