I was in Copenhagen this week for the awards ceremony of The Aviation Challenge (TAC) 2025. Hosted by SAS, the event saw SkyTeam recognise sustainability achievements across 18 categories, showcasing practical solutions from flight and ground operations to knowledge sharing, supply chains and Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF).
Being part of the TAC jury is a particularly rewarding experience. It is great to see so many ideas and then to witness how quickly these ideas are turned into action with measurable impact. It is a great reminder that innovation in aviation sustainability isn’t short on creativity.
Now in its fourth edition, The Aviation Challenge continues to grow. This year brought together 22 airlines, including affiliates and non-SkyTeam carriers, and resulted in more than 80 showcase flights – the highest number to date. Behind those flights were a total of 224 solutions and initiatives that had been submitted to the jury, all focused on finding workable ways to cut emissions and share what works across the industry.
What stood out during the judging process was how scalable and deployable many of the initiatives were. These weren’t distant concepts or theoretical ideas. They were changes that can be tested quickly, refined and, importantly, rolled into everyday operations. That’s critical as aviation’s sustainability journey is being built on cumulative progress, lots of smaller improvements applied at scale.
The outcomes from TAC 2025 show what’s possible with this approach: Showcase flights achieved an average 13.5% improvement in CO₂ intensity compared to each participating airline's own standard operations, and a 12% reduction compared to the industry average. Those results came from familiar levers: route optimisation, maintenance improvements, weight reduction initiatives and greater use of SAF. None of these are a silver bullet on their own, but together, they deliver meaningful impact.
Some of the highlights included KLM Cityhopper's 100% SAF ticket pilot, which embedded the full SAF surcharge into ticket prices to test customer acceptance and normalise SAF adoption. TUI introduced 3D printing of non-bear loading aircraft parts to reduce lead times and emissions. Air France replaced dry ice with reusable gel packs on short/medium‑haul flights from CDG to maintain cold chain without sublimation emissions. These were just a few highlights from all the winners which included Air Europa, China Airlines, Delta, JamboJet, Kenya Airways, KLM, Korean Air, Saudia, Scandinavian Airlines, Transavia Netherlands, Vietnam Airlines, Virgin Atlantic.
The Aviation Challenge provides a valuable platform for moving from demonstrations to widespread adoption, enabling airlines to share data, lessons learned and operational insights in a transparent way. That shared learning is what makes our industry unique as we work towards decarbonising air transport by 2050.
TAC reinforces a simple but important message for the industry: progress is already happening, and it’s being driven by action, creativity and collaboration. Many of the ideas showcased are smaller solutions, the kind that can make a real difference when applied at scale in day-to-day operations and shared widely across the industry. If that happens, the cumulative effect of these “small changes” will be significant, and initiatives like The Aviation Challenge will continue to play an important role in accelerating aviation’s transition towards net zero carbon emissions.