Etihad Airways partners with Microsoft on driving sustainability strategy

Etihad Airways, the national carrier of the United Arab Emirates, announced a new partnership with Microsoft, leveraging its latest tools and technologies to advance its sustainability goals. Under the agreement, the companies will be working together to use advanced analytics and AI to measure and benchmark Etihad’s environmental footprint, allowing the business to implement and assess carbon efficiency savings across its business operations.

“Innovation and sustainability are at the core of our business, and our continued partnership with Microsoft will support us in meeting our sustainability goals to reduce carbon emissions both in the air through operational efficiencies, and on the ground, through improvements in our back office processes and technology infrastructure,” said Tony Douglas, Group CEO, Etihad Aviation Group. “Etihad is aligned with the UAE’s mission to conserve and preserve our environment for generations to come and we have made significant progress over the last two years towards our ‘net-zero carbon emissions by 2050’ goal with our sustainability portfolio. We look forward to working closely with Microsoft to enhance these developments.”

The innovative collaboration will focus on the implementation of cutting-edge tools and technologies which will turn data into actionable insights and unlock scenarios and use cases that will help Etihad reduce its carbon footprint.

Etihad and Microsoft have also committed to jointly identifying opportunities for collaboration to achieve both organisations’ sustainability goals while building thought-leadership and further partnerships with organisations in the UAE and the region. This will further drive the national sustainability agenda and build a supportive technology ecosystem which will allow organisations of all sizes to take carbon reduction measures based on data driven insights.

“We are aligned with the UAE’s long-term sustainability goals and practices to accelerate growth responsibly, while fulfilling the nation’s ambitious objectives,” said Sayed Hashish, General Manager, Microsoft UAE. “For more than a decade, Microsoft has been investing to reduce environmental impact while supporting the digital transformation of organisations around the world through cloud services. The commitments and investments we make are important steps in reducing our own environmental impact, but we recognize that the opportunity for positive change is greatest by empowering customers and partners to achieve their own sustainability goals. Therefore, this partnership with Etihad is incredibly exciting: by empowering more and more organizations with the right insights, we will be able to reach critical mass to reduce carbon emissions on a significant scale.”