Netherlands: Amsterdam Airport Schiphol to trial sustainable taxiing

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol and its partners are set to start a trial of sustainable aircraft taxiing. Under this trial, a special tow vehicle called ‘taxibot’ will be used to bring the aircraft to the runway. With this, the aircraft engine will be turned off. The trial is carried out along with Air Traffic Control the Netherlands, the Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Waterstaat (Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment) Corendon Dutch Airlines, KLM, Transavia, easyJet, dnata and KLM Ground Services. The initial tests will tow an empty Corendon aircraft to different runways. Based on the success of the test, the trial will be extended to operational aircraft in the next phase. The vehicle features a hybrid combination of electric and diesel engines, enabling it to use 95% less fuel compared to the fuel used by aircraft engines in the taxiing phase. With this trial, Schiphol aims to achieve total fuel consumption savings of 50% to 85% during taxiing as the engines have to warm-up before take-off.<br/>