Airlines are constantly looking for new ways to reduce fuel burn, including flying the most efficient routes possible, investing in new aircraft and applying new technologies to existing aircraft.
Winglets are by far one of the most popular fuel saving, drag reduction technologies. They were installed on older Boeing 737s as a retrofit, with a similarly titled ‘Sharklet’ product started being offered for existing Airbus A320 family products. While not new, various forms of wingtip devices made their way to a number of aircraft types, and soon became the standard on newer developed aircraft.
Besides wingtip devices, there have been a number of other aerospace modifications which have entered the commercial market, with one of the latest being the AeroSHARK riblet film. In a joint venture between Lufthansa Technik and BASF, they developed AeroSHARK, a surface film that is modeled on the drag-reducing structure of shark skin. It consists of friction-reducing ribs around 50 micrometers in size dubbed riblets.
The film is not immediately noticeable to the naked eye, but covers around 800 to 950 square meters and is applied across specific parts of the fuselage and engine nacelles. When trialed on Lufthansa’s Boeing 777 Freighters, they saw a fuel savings and carbon emissions reduction of 1.1%.
The first customer to commercially deploy the AeroSHARK skin was SWISS, installing them on their fleet of 12 Boeing 777-300ERs. They would later see an annual fuel savings of 4,800 tons with CO2 emissions being cut by 15,200 tons.
Austrian Airlines and EVA Air Implement AeroSHARK
Austrian Airlines will be the first Boeing 777-200ER operator to implement the AeroSHARK film, completing installation on four of its units by Q1 2024. Each aircraft will be fitted with about 830 square meters of the film, potentially saving the airline 2,650 tons of fuel and over 8,300 tons of CO2 yearly. While it’s not easy to visualize those savings, this corresponds to fuel burn and CO2 emissions for around 46 flights from Vienna to New York.
Credit: Masakatsu Ukon/Flickr | CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Generic“We take our responsibility seriously and take every possible step to reduce CO2 emissions within our flight operations. At one percent, the sharkskin’s efficiency potential may not sound like much, but in total it will save thousands of tons of CO2 per year on long-haul flights,” says Austrian COO Francesco Sciortino. “Even though our B777s are in their final years of service, we take this investment to get one step closer to our CO2 reduction targets.”
EVA Air will also implement the riblet film on its fleet of nine Boeing 777-200 freighters, with an expected yearly savings of 2,500 tons of fuel and over 7,800 tons of CO2.
“EVA Air is continually progressing towards its goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, constantly seeking the latest technologies to reduce our carbon footprint,” said Albert Liao, executive vice president corporate planning division at EVA Air.
“We are delighted to collaborate with Lufthansa Technik in applying the fuel-saving AeroSHARK surface technology to our 777 freighters. This innovation not only reduces fuel consumption but also lowers CO2 emissions. EVA Air will continuously monitor the actual fuel-saving benefits and further evaluate additional aircraft to be equipped with this technology.”
EVA Air hopes to expand the initiative and install the film across its entire fleet of Boeing 777s by 2027.
With EVA Air, Austrian, Lufthansa Cargo and SWISS already using the new tech, it won’t be surprising to see more 777 operators considering AeroSHARK until they move to newer aircraft types.
Featured image: BASF SE
