Yesterday at the airline’s annual Media Day, Southwest unveiled its first “green plane,” a remodeled 737-700 which re-entered the SWA fleet yesterday evening on a flight from Dallas to Seattle.

Updates to the interior of the green plane will lighten the aircraft by up to 5 pounds per seat, increasing fuel efficiency and reducing waste.  The updates include:

• new InterfaceFLOR carpeting — a 100% recyclable carpet that can be installed in sections, reducing labor and materials required to replace carpet.  In most planes right now, there is just a single piece of carpet, which means a lot of time and effort to replace.  The new carpet can be easily replaced whenever necessary, and returned to the manufacturer for recycling when removed.
• two new kinds of seat covers — Southwest is testing e-Leather in its seats on one side of the aisle, and IZIT leather on the other side.  e-Leather is a man-made material composed of recycled materials that have been discarded by the leather industry, while IZIT leather is a premium leather-alternative.  Both are lightweight, eco-friendly materials that will reduce the weight of each seat by about 2 pounds.  My vote, as a vegetarian, is for the IZIT leather.
• canvas life vest pouch — Southwest replaced its metal life vest pouches with canvas ones on the green plane, resulting in a weight savings of one pound per seat, as well as significant space savings, allowing more room for carry-on luggage underneath each seat.
• foam fill — a lighter weight fill for the back of seats that will reduce seat weight while improving passenger comfort.
• aluminum passenger seat rub strips — I don’t know what a rub strip is, but the green plane has aluminum ones instead of plastic, which makes them more durable and recyclable, whatever they are.

The green plane officially became part of the Southwest fleet on October 21, 2009.  If you get to fly on it, you’ll be asked to fill out a survey to help the airline determine how the green improvements are working out.  I have a couple of Southwest flights coming up next month — maybe I’ll get to ride on the green plane!

Hopefully this environmental initiative will be a success, and we’ll all be flying on greener planes soon.

Watch the green plane makeover in action:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBlD4Q8edZk&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 2:11 pm and is filed under Going Green. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.