How Lufthansa Turned 100kg Into €2.6 Million

One of Lufthansa’s most important corporate objectives is their commitment to minimize their impact on the environment. Perhaps more concerned about the environment than any other airline.

To that end, Lufthansa continuously looks at ways to improve themselves in a manner that helps passengers, the environment and ultimately their bottom line. With technological achievements (such as Cyclean) and simple discipline, Lufthansa has been able to accomplish some fairly impressive objectives when it comes to minimize the airline’s impact on the enviroment.

Recently, Lufthansa shared a few statistics that I thought were worth sharing:

With Boeing’s 747-8 and Airbus’ A380 Lufthansa burns less than 4 liters per passenger, per 100 kilometers. When asked in a survey, most people thought that it took 10 times as much fuel to transport one passenger 100 kilometers. This kind of fuel efficiency rivals the most economical hybrid automobiles. However, when was the last time your Prius let you cross the Atlantic……

Since 1991, Lufthansa has been able to increase flight operations by 42.6% without increasing it’s carbon footprint. The airline has not increased CO2 pollution in nearly 13 years.

And perhaps the most impressive:

Last year, Lufthansa took a thorough look at ways to further improve aircraft efficiency when they allowed Lufthansa employees to board aircraft to help find additional ways to reduce aircraft weight. Nothing was “sacred” and everything was subject to scrutiny.

After this exercise, which included inspecting everything from the amount of trolleys, eating utensils, hangars, magazines and duty-free items on board, the weight and size of flashlights, quantity and weight of pillows and blankets, etc. etc., it was discovered that another 100 kilograms of excess and unnecessary weight could be removed from aircraft without impacting passenger safety and comfort.

As a result of this scrutiny which may seem trivial to most, Lufthansa discovered a substantial savings. By removing 100kg from each aircraft, and multiplying that by the thousands of flights that Lufthansa operates during the year Lufthansa has found a €2.6 million saving in fuel costs. Keep in mind that this savings means that thousands of gallons of jet fuel were saved and not burned into the atmosphere due to unnecessary items being transported aboard the aircraft.