Tokyo, Japan, September 2, 2024 – All Nippon Airways (ANA), Japan’s largest airline and renowned for its “FLYING HONU” turtle-themed Airbus A380’s, has today welcomed another marine-life-inspired aircraft to its fleet: Its first Boeing 777 equipped with AeroSHARK. This revolutionary surface technology is inspired by shark skin, reduces drag, and enhances fuel efficiency. ANA is the first individual airline to operate both passenger and freighter variants of the Boeing 777 with this innovation.
The first modified Boeing 777F (JA771F) began scheduled cargo flights today, with plans to extend the AeroSHARK technology to a passenger aircraft (JA796A) by next spring, furthering ANA’s commitment to investment in fuel efficient technologies that reduce emissions.
AeroSHARK, a joint development by Lufthansa Technik and BASF, is a functional surface film inspired by the drag-reducing structure of sharkskin. The film features ribs around 50 micrometers in size, called riblets. Closely guided by Lufthansa Technik, ANA’s MRO partner has recently applied several hundreds of square meters of these riblet films to the fuselage of JA771F, which re-entered commercial service today with the first AeroSHARK-optimized flight from Tokyo-Narita to Chicago-O’Hare.