Carrier's initiative for green dismantling of commercial aircraft earns two top honours

MONTREAL, April 17, 2015 /CNW Telbec/ - Air Transat is pleased and proud to have won two Mercure awards — for Large Business of the Year and for Sustainable Development — at the Mercuriades awards gala, in recognition of its program for green dismantling of end-of-life aircraft. The project, completed in 2013, saw two Airbus A310s eco-responsibly and sustainably dismantled, with 87% of the aircrafts' components reclaimed.

"We are honoured to receive these two awards," says Jean-François Lemay, General Manager of Air Transat. "Air Transat has once again shown itself to be a leader in sustainable development with this innovative project. It is perfectly in line with our environmental management strategy, which is applied across all business units of the Transat group and guides us toward our shared objective of becoming a model for corporate responsibility in the international travel industry."

The Mercuriades is a major business competition held since 1981 and organized by the Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec, the province's largest business network. It rewards the visionary spirit, daring and savoir-faire of companies that contribute to development in Quebec and its regions. Winning companies are inspiring models of success for the next generation of businesspeople as well as all players in the Quebec economy.

The dismantling of the two Air Transat planes was conducted in collaboration with Aerocycle, a company specialized in eco-responsible aircraft dismantling and recycling, in compliance with an international standard established by the Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association (AFRA) and using an environmental management system introduced by Aéroports de Montréal (ADM, the Montreal airports authority), with co-ordination provided by sustainable-development consulting firm Eko-Conseil.

Air Transat's green-dismantling initiative was previously recognized in 2014, when the carrier received the Grand Prix de l'Entreprise citoyenne de l'année (grand prize as corporate citizen of the year) from Novae magazine, which informs Quebec professionals on sustainable development and responsible business practices. That same year, French magazine L'Écho Touristique also acknowledged the program by awarding it a sustainable tourism innovation trophy.

About Air Transat
Air Transat is Canada's leading holiday travel airline. Every year, it carries some 3 million passengers to nearly 60 destinations in 30 countries aboard its fleet of Boeing narrow-body and Airbus wide-body jets. The company employs approximately 2,000 people. Air Transat is a business unit of Transat A.T. Inc., an integrated international tour operator with more than 60 destination countries and that distributes products in over 50 countries.

SOURCE Transat A.T. Inc.

Image with caption: "From left to right : Keith Lawless, Senior Director, Business Sustainability and Improvement, Air Transat, Estelle Beaudry, VP, Business Development and Environment, Aerocycle, Ron Haber, President and CEO, Aerocycle, Jean-François Lemay, General Manager, Air Transat (CNW Group/Transat A.T. Inc.)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20150417_C6416_PHOTO_EN_14413.jpg