Saudia wins customer and employee engagement awards

Saudia’s ‘Sustainability In The Air Lab’ has asked passengers and employees who experienced the airline’s operations first hand, for their opinions and ideas.

The airline was a finalist in five categories of the SkyTeam Sustainable Flight Challenge. As a result, Saudia was announced as the winner of the customer engagement category. This follows the airline running the world’s first in-flight sustainability lab on a Jeddah to Madrid flight to crowd-source ideas from passengers.

The sustainability lab was staged on 12 May 2022 on SV 227 from Jeddah to Madrid onboard a Saudia 787-9 Dreamliner, which was also the world’s longest carbon net-positive flight.

In addition to ‘Best Customer Engagement’, the carrier also won in the ‘Best Employee Engagement’ along with the other participating airlines. Additionally, Saudia was a finalist in a further three categories: greatest CO₂ reduction medium haul, lowest CO₂ emissions ground handling and best sustainable innovation (in-flight).

Collectively, Saudia and the other participants of the ‘Sustainable Flight Challenge’ generated over 700 unique innovations and an average CO₂ emissions reduction of 15 per cent.

Passengers on the flight were invited to submit ideas on greener air travel, covering the flight itself, time spent at the airport and arriving at the destination.

Saudia CEO Capt. Ibrahim Koshy said: “We are incredibly honoured that our sustainability efforts have been recognised with two awards. The ‘Sustainable Flight Challenge’ has been a unique and noteworthy challenge for our team, who utilised this experience as a springboard for new sustainable initiatives to come.

“‘Sustainability In The Air Lab’ saw us asking people who experienced our operations first hand, staff and guests, for their opinions and ideas. The result and the quality of suggestions we received exceeded our expectations, and we are currently evaluating them to see how they may be implemented.”