Introducing the notion of sustainability into humanitarian air operations is an important and challenging subject. Important, because we must play our part in this collaborative effort to reduce the environmental impact of air operations while helping to maintain viable socio-economic conditions for our aviation partners. Challenging, because we work within a restrictive technical and regulatory framework while serving our demanding humanitarian programs in the best possible safety conditions.
To meet the requirements for sustainability in humanitarian aviation in the long term, we are notably maintaining our technological monitoring of drones and airships to be able to integrate the best options to come.
To consolidate our environmental approach in the short term, we have launched several initiatives and projects, the main being:
- Introduce a “load factor performance” indicator, also emphasizing a sustainable approach, in our flight planning software to support the optimization of our air operations.
- Introduce a sustainability clause in our contracts to encourage our aviation partners to maintain and/or introduce good environmental practices.
- Workshop on Waste Management: Developed a checklist from two field pilot projects (Nairobi and Juba) to assess our current situation in terms of aviation waste management. The approach will be included in our audit program in 2024