Austrian Airlines will be the first airline globally to equip their Boeing 777-200ER aircraft with innovative “AeroSHARK” surface technology. On a total of four Boeing 777-200ERs the fuselage and engine nacelles will be covered with the “sharkskin” film developed by Lufthansa Technik and the company BASF. The significantly reduced frictional resistance resulting from the film will reduce the CO₂ emissions of Austrian Airlines’ long-haul fleet and fuel consumption.

Savings of over 8,000 tons of CO₂
By applying a total of 830 square meters of Riblet film per aircraft to the surface of the fuselage and engine nacelles, a saving of around one percent of the total fuel consumption per flight can be achieved. Applied to four B777s, the technology can achieve savings of around 2,650 tons of fuel and over 8,300 tons of CO₂. This corresponds to around 46 flights from Vienna to New York.

“We take our responsibility seriously and take every possible step to reduce CO₂ emissions within our flight operations. At one percent, the sharkskin’s efficiency potential may not sound like much, but in total it will save thousands of tons of CO₂ per year on long-haul flights,” says Austrian COO Francesco Sciortino. “Even though our B777s are in their final years of service, we take this investment to get one step closer to our CO₂ reduction targets.”

“The fact that we are rolling out the fuel-saving sharkskin technology on another aircraft type with Austrian Airlines is also good news for other Boeing 777-200ER operators,” emphasizes Harald Gloy, COO at Lufthansa Technik. “These are the first of hopefully many more aircraft of this type that will have lower fuel consumption and an improved carbon footprint thanks to AeroSHARK.”

AeroSHARK is a surface technology jointly developed by Lufthansa Technik and BASF, which consists of transparent ribs around 50 micrometers in size – the so-called riblets. It imitates the properties of particularly aerodynamic sharkskin and thus optimizes aerodynamics in relevant areas of the aircraft.

Austrian Airlines will successively equip four of its six Boeing 777-200ER long-haul aircraft with surface technology from December 2024. The application to all four aircraft will be completed by March 2025.

The sharkskin technology is another important building block on Austrian Airlines’ CO₂ reduction path. Together with the Lufthansa Group, Austrian aims to reduce its CO₂ emissions by 30.6% by 2030 compared to 2019.