Schiphol is part of the HERON consortium, a collaboration between 24 European organizations with a link to aviation. HERON stands for “Highly Efficient Green Operations”: its goal is to demonstrate how aviation’s environmental footprint can be reduced with innovative procedures that range from more efficient aircraft operations to optimised management of air traffic during the flight planning phase and then in real-time
This project is part of the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) 3 Joint Undertaking. Schiphol is the work package lead for WP2.2: Green Surface Operations Management, where partners aim to implement various greener and/or smart technologies to increase the sustainability of aircraft ground operations. KLM and Schiphol are collaborating to demonstrate Sustainable Taxiing operations at Amsterdam Airport, learn valuable lessons for implementation and pursue a first scale-up of the operation.
We want to bring aircraft to and from the runway with a special aircraft tug called a TaxiBot. This means that planes can taxi without using their engines. The result is less kerosene being used and therefore less CO₂, NOx and ultrafine particle emissions. Sustainable taxiing is an essential part of our goal to become an emission-free airport in 2030. While only Schiphol and KLM are part of the HERON consortium for this demonstration, we are working together with more local sector partners to achieve Sustainable Taxiing, including Corendon, dnata, LVNL, Swissport, Transavia, TUI Fly and Viggo.
You can find more information about the HERON consortium and all demonstrations.
HERON has received funding from the CINEA– European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) in cooperation with the SESAR 3 Joint Undertaking. Schiphol has received the following amount from the EU for the HERON work package:
EUR 4.807.265
