Transport Secretary Mark Harper is on board the first transatlantic flight using sustainable aviation fuel (Saf), having described it as being a “step” toward guilt-free flying.
Virgin Atlantic became the first airline to use Saf to fuel a passenger plane as one of its Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners took off from London’s Heathrow Airport at 11:45 a.m. headed to John F. Kennedy Airport in New York.
Saf is created from recycled cooking oil and animal fat waste and can be used to fuel planes as long as it is mixed with up to 50 percent kerosene.
The Civil Aviation Authority eventually granted an operating permit to Virgin Atlantic after analysing ground tests, including with an engine running on 100 percent Saf.
Earlier, Mr. Harper said, “Today’s 100 percent Saf-powered flight shows how we can decarbonise transport both now and in the future, cutting lifecycle emissions by 70 percent and inspiring the next generation of solutions.”
He said, “This government has backed today’s flight to take off and we will continue to support the UK’s emerging Saf industry as it creates jobs, grows the economy and gets us to jet zero.”
Virgin Atlantic was given £1 million by the government in Dec. 2022 to plan and operate the test, known as Flight100, to demonstrate the effectiveness of Saf.
Mr. Harper was joined on board by the founder of Virgin, Sir Richard Branson and Virgin Atlantic’s chief executive Shai Weiss but there were no fare-paying passengers.
Sir Richard said: “The world will always assume something can’t be done until you do it. The spirit of innovation is getting out there and trying to prove that we can do things better for everyone’s benefit.”
Prime Minister Says Flight is ‘Very Exciting’
The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has said the flight was “very exciting” and, in a promotional video on LinkedIn, he said Saf had the potential to, “create a UK industry with an annual turnover of almost £2.5 billion which could support over 5,000 UK jobs.”Mr. Sunak praised the “blue-sky thinking” of Virgin Atlantic and their partners in the venture, Rolls-Royce, Boeing and Sheffield University.
But earlier Mr. Harper was challenged about whether Saf really offered the answer to “guilt-free flying” for those who are concerned about climate change.
He told the BBC, “We’re going to be legislating to put the sustainable aviation fuel mandate in place by 2025, which is so that at least 10 percent of aviation fuel has to be sustainable.”
“That’s a step, yes. It’s not the only solution. But it’s a really important step with those other technologies to make sure we can carry on flying and protect the environment,” Mr. Harper added.
‘Only way to cut CO2 ... is to Fly Less’
She accused of the aviation industry of pushing a “misleading” narrative and said, “Hopefully, we’ll have better technological solutions in future but, for now, the only way to cut CO2 from aviation is to fly less.”In the research, by Susanne Becken, Brendan Mackey and David S. Lee, they argue: “The scaling up of Saf to not only maintain but grow global aviation is problematic as it competes for land needed for nature-based carbon removal, clean energy that could more effectively decarbonise other sectors, and captured CO2 to be stored permanently.”
Mr. Weiss said, “It’s taken radical collaboration to get here and we’re proud to have reached this important milestone, but we need to push further.”
“There’s simply not enough Saf and it’s clear that in order to reach production at scale, we need to see significantly more investment,” he added.
“This will only happen when regulatory certainty and price support mechanisms, backed by government, are in place,” continued Mr. Weiss.
U.S. company Gulfstream Aerospace operated the first transatlantic business jet powered by 100 percent Saf earlier this month.
