At the recent World Environmental Day Event 2017 Emirate Airlines uncovers an environment friendly aircraft cleaning technique.
The technique known as ‘aircraft dry is enabled to save millions of water every year. In their statement, little or no water is involved in cleaning the aircraft, which is in contrast to conventional methods of aircraft cleaning which typically use thousands of litres of water per wash.
During the course of every flight, an aircraft accumulates dust and grime on its external surface. In addition to making the aircraft look dirty and less appealing, the dirt that accumulates on the aircraft surface also increases the fuel it consumes by making the aircraft heavier and less aerodynamic.
Traditionally aircrafts are cleaned by using highly pressurized water between four and five times every year, On an average this method consumed more than 11,300 litres of water to clean an Airbus 380 aircraft and more than 9,500 litres of water to clean a Boeing 777 aircraft.
The statement further read, “In this technique, a liquid cleaning product is first applied manually to the entire external surface of the aircraft. Clean microfibre fabric is then used to remove the cleaning product which has dried to a film, removing the dirt along with it and leaving the aircraft clean and polished.“The aircraft is left with a fine protective film allowing the painted surface to retain a longer gloss and shine. It takes a crew of 15 staff about 12 hours to clean an A380 and about nine hours to clean a Boeing 777 aircraft.”
Emirate reveals that its fleet of over 250 aircraft had been maintained with this technique since early 2016.
