Reeling from high oil prices and under pressure to curb pollution, the aviation industry flaunted a green agenda under tightened security amid fears of environmentalist protests at an air show on Wednesday.
The heads of Airbus and the airplane division of rival Boeing set aside fierce rivalries over dwindling jet orders and a trade row over subsidies to share a platform on sustainable aviation on the third day of Farnborough's air show.
The world's largest showcase for the aerospace industry, held on alternate years in the small English town and Le Bourget near Paris, takes place against the backdrop of oil prices which have given the industry an incentive to cut fuel and save costs.
Usually brimming with wheeler-dealers in sunglasses promoting the world's most gas-guzzling machines, Farnborough has been bombarded this year with expensively produced posters promoting air travel as the greenest way of crossing the globe.
The opening of a sustainability conference organised by the Farnborough Airshow was briefly marred by the deafening roar of a Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornet taking off in a reek of fumes.
"That's not an environmentally friendly aircraft", Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders quipped to journalists in a media centre patrolled by police watching for any protesters breaking through the show's perimeter ahead of its public days.
The world's largest airliner, the Airbus A380 superjumbo, was parked behind billboards suggesting the 525-seat aircraft, which Airbus calls the planet's most fuel-efficient plane, is as environmentally sound as bird flight or water on a leaf.
"I applaud Airbus's commitment to join us in planting a love of nature in the minds of children and young people," Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary for the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, said.
The aviation industry is desperate to cut the amount of fuel burned, by reducing weight with new composite materials or making a new generation of engines, in order to prop up orders from sickly airlines as well as to deter greater regulation.
But academics say making aviation carbon-neutral is some way off, as traffic grows faster than even the most optimistic forecasts of average annual increases in efficiency.
