American Airlines today completes the first flight through the Atlantic interoperability initiative to reduce emissions (AIRE).

Flights by American and Air France within the AIRE scheme were supposed to occur in 2009, but were postponed by the fatal crash of an Air France A330 in June.

AIRE is a joint initiative among several airlines, the European Commission and the FAA to accelerate the application of new technologies and operational procedures that cut carbon emissions, noise pollution and conserve fuel.

American today on a Boeing 767-300-operated fight from Paris to Miami used several fuel conservation measures including single engine taxi on departure and arrival, continuous climb out and descent, optimised routing over water and a tailored arrival.

The carrier uses some of those procedures in its fuel conservation programme Fuel Smart.

Air France completed its first AIRE flight on the same Paris-Miami routing on 6 April.

AIRE's research includes gate-to-gate flight demonstrations to test benefits of technologies targeted for use in FAA's NextGen air traffic control system and the European Commission's Sesar air traffic management system.

Source: Air Transport Intelligence news