Lufthansa Group has joined forces with chemicals giant BASF to equip its aircraft with technology to improve fuel efficiency, lower emissions and help it reach its aim of climate-neutrality by 2050.

The technology is called ‘AeroSHARK’ and has been designed to imitate the properties of sharkskin to make planes more aerodynamic. This reduces their resistance in the air, which lowers fuel consumption.

The two companies have designed the technology together and Lufthansa aims to equip all its Boeing 777 freighter fleet with it by 2022, which it claims will reduce emissions and make its aircraft more economical.

Lufthansa has stated that this change to its fleet will produce annual savings of around 3,700 tonnes of fuel and of 11,700 tonnes of carbon emissions, the equivalent of 48 individual flights from Frankfurt to Shanghai.

It also revealed that if the sharkskin technology was expanded widely, it could reduce overall carbon emissions by 3%.

Christina Foerster, Member of the Executive Board of Deutsche Lufthansa AG, said: “We have always played a leading role in introducing environmentally friendly technologies.

“The new sharkskin technology for aircraft shows what strong and highly innovative partners can achieve collectively for the environment. This will help us to achieve our goal of climate-neutrality by 2050.”