Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS) is set to procure two special towing vehicles, TaxiBots, for moving aircraft in a sustainable manner.
With this purchase, the airport is said to become Europe’s first airport to deploy TaxiBots.
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This investment is part of Schiphol’s strategy to accelerate the process of making aviation more sustainable.
These special vehicles, which will arrive at AMS in mid-2022, will be provided by Smart Airport Systems.
An earlier trial at the airport indicated that sustainable taxiing has the potential to minimise CO₂, nitrogen and ultrafine particle emissions with nearly 50% less fuel usage during taxiing.
Fuel savings can touch up to 65% when aeroplanes taxi to the Polderbaan.
AMS has drafted a plan in collaboration with its partners for promoting green taxiing as a standard procedure.
These entities include Air Traffic Control the Netherlands (LVNL), KLM, Transavia, Corendon Dutch Airlines and ground handling firms dnata and KLM Ground Services.
Initially, the TaxiBots will undergo a follow-up trial at the airport, in which Swissport, TUI and Viggo will also take part.
In a statement, Schiphol said: “This is part of a European initiative, the ALBATROSS project, aimed at developing and demonstrating more sustainable flight operations for the whole gate-to-gate scenarios, applying multiple adopted strategies and solutions to save fuel for each stage of a flight.”
Eventually, the live trial will move towards a standard procedure, with certain kinds of aircraft taxiing sustainably at the Polderbaan runway.
For making sustainable taxiing to and from the Polderbaan a structural possibility, the airport will modify the infrastructure accordingly.
These modifications will be performed before the follow-up pilot starts.
At present, a few TaxiBots are in use at two Indian airports globally.
Last year in October, AMS disclosed plans for a 37% cumulative rise in airport charges mainly to recover losses caused by Covid-19.
