Alaska Airlines Marks Earth Day With Interiors Upcycling Program

In time for Earth Day, Alaska Airlines has followed the example of Southwest, JetBlue, and KLM up-cycling their used interiors and converting them to useful travel totes.

“We’re taking in-flight recycling to the next level with the Looptworks Carry-On collection. Thanks to our partnership with Looptworks, we’re re-purposing over 4,000 leather seat covers from our regional carrier, Horizon Air.” –Alaska Airlines

This is a particularly poignant trend for me as our company used scrap leather from various programs to gift our customers and as trade show promotional items.

Each time I see one of these up-cycling initiatives I am reminded of those lovely designers and seamstresses we had in-house, coming up with new ways to ensure nothing went to waste. It’s a bit of a melancholy memory, but a very welcome one.

Alaska_Airlines___Looptworks_Carry-On_Collection_-_YouTube_1

Aircraft Interiors take tremendous effort to design, produce and install, and are durable beyond their years of scheduled service. Such beauties should not clutter landfills and airlines are to be commended for doing something to ensure that doesn’t happen.

Besides, these up-cycling programs often contribute to good causes. I dare you to see this from Southwest without shedding happy tears:

It makes me proud that the sketchy SWA interiors everyone said could not be reliably produced–and our team proved could be–were later re-purposed to make this little boy happy.

So AvGeeks, do your Earth Day part by acquiring one of these limited editions. Believe me: they will last and last and last.  Alaska Airlines is offering a discount code: ALASKA20 at www.looptworks.com/alaska which offers a 20% discount on purchases made by May 15, 2016.

Marisa Garcia

After working for sixteen years in aviation, specializing in aircraft interiors design and aviation safety equipment, and getting hands-on with aircraft cabins in hangars around the world, Marisa Garcia turned her expertise into industry insight. She has been reporting on aviation matters since 2014. Every day, she's putting words to work.

Recommended Articles

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: