ZERO – the travel business and the environment

Our monthly ZERO report. As this is a subscription report, the following is not the current edition.

Briefs

[] Air Asia has signed an agreement to lease 100 of UK-based Vertical Aerospace’s VX4 electric aircraft from Ireland-based Avolon*.

  VA says it has orders for 1350 aircraft, valued at US$5.4bn. Other named customers are American, Gol, Iberojet, Japan Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, as well as for leasing from Avolon, Bristow, Marubeni. Avolon’s customers include Gol and JAL – with AA, totalling 450 VX4s.

  The VX4* is a 4-seat electric aircraft planned to fly at 300kph with a 150km range.

*Notes:

-Ireland-based Avolon, a leasing company, is 70% owned by China-based Bohai Leasing, 30% by Japan-based financing company Orix Aviation. It has 824 aircraft.

-Launch date not given.

[] Airbus has signed an agreement with CFM International, a JV between US-based General Electric and France-based Safran, both aviation companies, to develop an aircraft engine fuelled by hydrogen.

  The target is to fit liquid hydrogen tanks on an A380 for test flights from around 2025, with commercial aircraft entering service from 2035.

[] Six travel companies* in Queensland plan to plant 70,000 coral fragments on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef over four years in an attempt to save the reef from dying.

  The program is funded by the government’s Reef Trust and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, with the University of Technology Sydney.

*Notes: Named is Wavelength Reef Cruises (leader).

[] TDN* reports on a study by Uswitch* on the cities with the most sustainable hotels.

  Four of the top-5 are in Canada. They are Vancouver with 89 hotels, of which 39 are counted as ‘sustainable’*, a 43.8% share, then Stockholm 216 87 40.3%, Toronto 150 37 24.7%, Calgary 136 32 23.5%, Edmonton 133 30 22.6%.

  Next, up to 20, are Lahore with 21.3% of its hotels considered sustainable, Medellin 20.0%, Bogota 19.6%, Ekurhuleni (east of Johannesburg) 19.5%, Johannesburg 19.2%, La Paz 18.7%, Amman 17.9%, Quito 17.3%, Munich 17.3%, Santiago 16.9%, Chennai 16.6%, Cape Town 16.5%, Sharjah 16.4%, Marrakesh 16.1%, Baku 16.1%.

*Notes:

-TDN is Greece-based publication Travel Daily News.

-Wikipedia shows UK-based Uswitch is a price-comparison site established in 2000. It focuses on communications, energy, insurance, personal finance.

-No definition given for criteria to be considered ‘sustainable’. Yet, the list, with a sizeable number of poor cities, requires this for proper credibility.

#environment

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