By Mohamed Attia
After the success of EgyptAir in operating the first flight with environmentally friendly services between Cairo and Paris led by Minister of Civil Aviation Mohamed Manar, the national air carrier said that it seeks to generalise environmentally friendly flights in the coming period in line with the Ministry of Aviation’s plan to confront the effects of climate change.
This comes through an integrated environmental system that applies all local and international recommendations and legislations in the field of aviation related to environmental protection and pollution reduction.
Minister Manar said that the ministry’s strategy in the field of environment stems from the directives of the political leadership, which pays great attention to the environment file and the efforts of the Egyptian state in all international forums to confront the phenomenon of climate change and keep pace with Egypt’s vision 2030.
For his part, Amr Aboul-Enein, head of EgyptAir Holding Company, who piloted the plane on the return flight from Paris, expressed his happiness to operate the first flight with environmentally friendly services and products, so that EgyptAir is the first airline in Africa to operate this flight.
Aboul-Enein indicated that it is planned in the future that all the company’s flights will be environmentally-friendly, which confirms EgyptAir’s leadership in the air transport industry, being the first airline established in Africa and the Middle East and the seventh company in the world, as the company celebrates this year its 90th anniversary.
Aboul-Enein added that the national company aims for the year 2022 to be the start of many “sustainable development initiatives”, as a timetable has been set for all flights to Europe with environmentally-friendly products and services by 2025, to be generalised on all flights of the airline network, successively.
He explained that EgyptAir’s plan aims to reduce the use of single-use plastic materials on its flights by 90 per cent and the company identified 27 products made of single-use plastic that were used on its planes and replaced them with environmentally-friendly products.
Karim Jamil, Director of Mitigation and Emissions Equation Department in the Safety and Quality Sector at EgyptAir, said that the environmentally-friendly flight that the company conducted came in light of the Ministry of Civil Aviation’s keenness to achieve the state’s strategy in sustainable development, pointing out that this development is achieved when each sector implements the steps of that strategy are in its field.
He added that environmentally-friendly flights aim to support the country’s strategy to reach an integrated sustainable ecosystem and are in line with the United Nations’ global goals within the framework of sustainable development, pointing out that EgyptAir has developed an action plan to achieve this.
EgyptAir has replaced 27 products made of plastic with environmentally-friendly products, with the aim of reducing harmful emissions and in order to preserve the environment.
For its part, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) confirmed that a single passenger, via a short or long-term flight, produces about 1.43 kilograms of waste, which negatively affects the environment and represents a major challenge to efforts to confront the repercussions of climate change due to these pollutants.
