WGS Dubai 2024: Boeing 737 MAX9 incident at Alaska Air also humiliated us, says Airbus CEO
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Dubai: The latest Boeing 737 MAX 9 crisis that shook the global aviation industry last month was a “humiliating event” for the US planemaker’s main rival Airbus, its chief executive Guillaume Faury said.
Boeing’s recovery from the near-disaster of a door panel that came off mid-flight from a 737 MAX 9 plane operated by Alaska Air will take years as the company tries to rebuild its reputation. Airbus is working with stakeholders to ensure that something similar does not happen again, regardless of the type of aircraft.
Speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai on Monday, Faury said: “With our competitor and the rest of the industry, we share the goal of safe flights and safe modes of transport for aviation. It is never good for an incident to occur, regardless of the type of aircraft.
Next steps
“This incident makes us very humble. We are thinking over and over again about what we should be doing to not be in that situation. Are we well protected (from such events)?
“And the fewer accidents we see, the less acceptable each one of them is. “No doubt standards are being raised and that is good for passenger safety.”
On whether Airbus has revised its safety protocols following the Boeing incident earlier this year, Faury said: “We are always challenging ourselves about what we do, what we don’t do and what we should do differently to deal with to improve”. and we learn from everywhere.”
Learn from setbacks
Faury said Airbus strives to learn from setbacks, from what happens in other industries, from innovations and from constantly arguing with regulators. “We are analyzing trends in the industry, what is happening with digitalization and what it allows, we constantly review what represents a challenge and that is the role of governance in a company.
“We are in a very rapidly changing world and you need to constantly review and challenge yourself,” Faury explained.
Juan Carlos Salazar, secretary general of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the United Nations specialized agency for civil aviation that sets global standards and policies, said the agency is working on policies to ensure that aviation remains the safest mode of transportation.
“Every time an incident or, worse, even an accident occurs, these global standards ensure that aviation remains the safest mode of transportation. We set global standards that each member state follows,” Salazar said.
aviation emissions
Faury and Salazar were at WGS in Dubai to discuss the impact of the aviation industry’s carbon emissions on the planet. In late 2022, ICAO member states adopted a long-term global aspirational goal (LTAG) to achieve net-zero carbon emissions from international aviation by 2050.
According to the ICAO chief, aviation accounted for 2 percent of global energy-related CO2 emissions.
Faury said: “Two percent is a gigaton. We don’t like to think of (2 percent) as something small or meaningless. “We want to bring our share to 0 percent by 2050. I am absolutely convinced that aviation is a force for the benefit of humanity, but global warming is a reality and we must address it.”
On how the aviation industry can reduce its emissions levels, Faury said there are 25,000 commercial aircraft flying around the world, and only 30 percent of those aircraft are state-of-the-art.
“When you replace an old generation aircraft with a new one, fuel consumption is reduced by 20 to 40 percent. “A lot of the backlog we have is for replacement,” he added.
The aircraft Airbus currently sells are capable of using 50 percent sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), a “green” liquid fuel currently used in commercial aviation that reduces CO2 emissions by up to 80 percent. .
“Less than 1 percent of the fuel airlines use today is SAF. “We are just at the beginning of that transition,” Faury said.
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