In 2011, Lufthansa Technik in Hamburg started investigating whether sharkskin-like grooves could reduce air resistance in commercial airliners. Photograph: Hannes Albert/Pool/Getty Images
German palaeontologist and biologist Wolf-Ernst Reif first observed miniature grooves in the scales of sharks in the late 1960s. Together with Dietrich Bechert from the German national aerospace centre, a specialist in fluid mechanics, the pair found that the prevailing doctrine that the fastest surfaces need to be entirely smooth was in fact incorrect. Micro-grooves can reduce frictional resistance in fluids, as compared to smooth surfaces, by between 8 and 11 per cent.
Then in 2015 Dr Kai-Christoph Pfingsten, a senior manager at Lufthansa Technik, discovered that the Red Bull air race team in Graz were successfully using thin-film sharkskin technology developed by a start-up,. Sceptical at first, Dr Pfingsten mused about trying adhesive films once again, by adapting the more advanced technique identified by Bionic Surfaces. He approached BASF to collaborate on scaling up the approach from small racing aircraft to full-size commercial airliners.
In 2021 and based on the results from the B747 with only its lower fuselage covered, Lufthansa Cargo and Swiss Air jointly decided to adopt AeroShark for the entire fuselages on many of their Boeing B777s, requiring about 800 to 950sq m for each specific aircraft. It took about a year for the European Union Aviation Safety Authority to certify the new technology as safe for commercial aviation.