Lucky Air: All-round action to build a green civil airline

Company profile
 
Lucky Air is an Asian Low Cost Carrier based in Yunnan, China, and a member of HNA Group. It operated its first flight in 2006, and officially announced its strategic transition to a Low Cost Carrier in 2016. As of October, 2018, Lucky Air has 50 aircrafts and operates 106 air routes, including 91 domestic routes, 15 international routes, which connect 81 cities (68 are domestic cities, 13 are international cities). Now Lucky Air is the second biggest airline company in Yunnan Province, and the fastest growing aviation enterprise in Asia. At present, route of Lucky Air is basing on Kunming, connecting first-tier and second-tier Chinese cities, and radiating to Southeast Asia and East Asia.
 
In the future, Lucky Air will be guided by customer needs, develop characteristic market products and cabin service culture, and build the safe and on-time operation quality, creating a sincere, convenient and affordable travel experience for passengers and shaping the image of a boutique enterprise. It is committed to becoming a low-cost airline based in the southwest and embracing domestic and international market with excellent quality and an industry benchmarking status.
 
Challenges
 
In recent years, the continuous expansion of air transportation scale has highlighted the restriction of airspace resources, infrastructure, and human resources, etc. in civil aviation. China has deepened the construction of ecological civilization, and improved the ecological environment by implementing dual control actions on the total amount and intensity of energy, resource consumption and construction land, and further increased the pressure on energy conservation and environmental protection of civil aviation. The task of transforming the development mode of the industry and realizing green and low-carbon development is even more arduous. 
 
Resource and environmental constraints have also put forward new requirements for civil aviation to accelerate the transformation of growth mode. How to implement the basic national policy of conserving resources and protecting the environment and achieving sustainable development in an effective way under the current situation is a major issue that Lucky Air needs to consider.
 
Solutions
 
Guided by the 13th Five-Year Plan for Civil Aviation Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction launched by the Civil Aviation Administration, Lucky Air has always adhered to the sustainability strategy of HNA Group to facilitate ecological progress and pursue low-carbon economy, and adopted various measures to implement energy conservation and environmental protection and conduct eco-friendly operations.
 
Conducting comprehensive green action
 
Lucky Air has established a standardized and efficient energy management system, comprehensively sorting out the company's main energy use areas and links, and vigorously adopting new energy-saving technologies, new processes and new materials, so as to reduce energy consumption and improve energy efficiency.
 
Route optimization. Route optimization is one of the main measures to save fuel oil and reduce carbon emissions. Lucky Air, through coordination with military aviation and control units, applies for direct flights on certain special airline segments to save flight distance and time. Since 2010, the coordination and optimization have been implemented in some airline segments of Lanzhou, Chaoshan and Dalian. At the same time, Lucky Air actively researched and applied for the temporary routes X and V series of the Civil Aviation Bureau to improve the utilization rate of temporary routes and save operating costs.
 
Losing the weight of dining cars. In 2017, through the procurement process, Lucky Air reduced the weight of the dining cars according to the size of the dining cars, as well as the influence of the cycles of dining cars in flight, cleaning, backup, maintenance, etc. It also used and applied the light dining cars to reduce the weight of dining cars so as to reduce fuel loss due to weight.
 
Optimized control of center of gravity of aircrafts. By consciously adjusting the passenger seats and configuring the loading space of cargo, mail and baggage, Lucky Air controlled the center of gravity of the aircrafts within the range of each model and reduced fuel consumption during flight operations on the basis of ensuring the safety of the flight safety.
 
Washing engines. Lucky Air regularly cleans the engine airflow passage to restore and maintain the flow capacity of the airflow passage and improve engine efficiency. Lucky Air has adopted a strict engine washing project monitoring process, and set a reasonable washing time period to ensure the normal operation of the washing work, and regularly statistically analyzes and analyzes the engine washing data and flight data to improve the engine cleaning effect and reduce fuel consumption.
 
Seat weight loss. Aircraft lightweight seats can reduce the aircraft's own weight and reduce flight fuel consumption under the same load weight; or increase the payload and reduce the fuel consumption per unit of transportation turnover under the same flight fuel consumption. To this end, in selecting aircraft seats, Lucky Air prioritizes the new lightweight seats. By regularly counting and analyzing the number of lightweight seats in the fleet and according to the actual flight hours of the aircraft and the fuel-efficient coefficient measured by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the company measures the weight loss of the aircraft to better achieve the goal of energy saving and emission reduction.
 
Actively creating a green culture
 
Lucky Air actively implements the philosophy of environmental protection and promotes the harmonious development of people and the environment. It not only creates an environment of energy conservation and environmental protection within the company, but also raises awareness of energy conservation among employees, and also issues low-carbon initiatives to the public to promote green travel and promote environmental protection.
 
Green travel. As the first domestic airline to reach a comprehensive strategic cooperation with Mobike, Lucky Air relies on Mobike’s intelligent shared bicycle platform and Lucky Air' high-quality and low-cost international brand and resource advantages to initiate a series of cooperation, such as brand riding day, low-carbon travel reward program, and joint exclusive parking area, with the theme of “green and low carbon and civilized travel" and following principle of "complementing each other's strengths, mutual support, integrated resources, and common development",  aiming to promote the interaction of ground transportation and air traffic in the field of travel.
 
Green office. Lucky Air insists on green office and calls on employees to start from trivial issues and actively participate in environmental protection work. Starting from the daily office, the company fully implements the paperless office, optimizes the operation of lamps, air conditioners and elevators in time, and uses office equipment as needed to eliminate waste.
 
Achievement
 
Social benefit
 
In 2017, Lucky AIR Route Optimization Project saved a total distance of 368,690 nautical miles, accumulated 867.224 hours of flight hours, and saved 2,186.06 tons of jet fuel, saving the fuel gradually. By reducing the weight of dining cars and applying the ordinary aluminum dining car to substitute a composite dining car, Lucky Air saved fuel consumption of 54.697 tons in 2017 and reduced carbon emissions by 253.768 tons.
 
Economic benefit
 
While reducing energy consumption brought about a reduction in operating costs, Lucky Air has formed a wide-ranging influence in the social sphere by actively promoting green travel. In 2017, more than 150 people participated in the civil aviation cycling event. The “Low Carbon Travel Program” attracted 840 participants and the event coverage reached about 520,000.
 
Prospect
 
The Thirteenth Five-Year Plan for the Development of Civil Aviation in China points out that it is necessary to speed up the construction of green civil aviation, strengthen the responsibility of subject, and enhance open communication to encourage airlines to independently carry out energy conservation and emission reduction reform and enhance energy management system construction, thus enhancing the level of green development capability. As an important member of the plan, Lucky Air has always insisted on promoting ecological progress and low-carbon energy conservation as an important strategy to promote its sustainable development. In the future, it will continue to make efforts in energy conservation, green development and green travel.