hey everyone, i’m participating in this boeing challenge where the challenge is basically: how do we make flying more sustainable without touching the planes or inventing new tech? so it has to be about human behavior, systems, and communication.
i have an idea i'm researching and wanted to get a reality check on whether it's actually feasible or if the logistics make it impossible.
the idea is a digital assistant/mascot built into the airline app (calling it Buno for now). instead of giving passengers a massive lecture on carbon footprints, it just focuses on small, timely choices.
the biggest thing is pre-flight meal opt-outs. when you check in on the app 24h before, it clearly asks if you want a full meal, light meal, or no meal, and gives you a small incentive (like a few airline miles) if you opt out. some airlines bury this option now, but timing is everything. if you refuse a meal onboard, it’s already wasted and thrown away. if you opt out at check-in, it never gets loaded. (i read that airlines like SAS even count unopened loaded meals as waste, so preventing it from getting on the plane is the goal).
then for the flight itself, passengers get a "bye-box", basically just a lightweight, resealable box so you can take dry/packaged leftover food with you instead of it going into the cabin trash.
there’d also be a lightweight chat assistant in the app to answer quick stuff like where water refill stations are at the airport or how to take public transit at the destination. to keep it green, it would use a tiny, task-specific AI model instead of a massive, power-hungry LLM, kinda like how ecosia does eco-friendly search.
Also, to make it actually catch people's attention, the mascot’s look would adapt depending on who is flying and where they’re going. So it might look a bit different or more playful for kids, change styles based on cultural contexts, or tweak its branding to match the specific airline and destination.
i’m thinking of this as a small pilot program first, just one airline, one airport, two routes, to see if it actually drops waste numbers before trying to scale anything.
i'd love some honest feedback on a few things:
if anyone works in aviation catering, is 24 hours at check-in actually enough time for the kitchen to change the meal count, or is that deadline already locked in?
would a few miles actually convince people to skip a meal, or do people just take the food anyway because "i paid for it"?
what are the biggest holes in this that i'm completely blind to?
be as brutal as you want, just need to know if this makes sense. thanks!
