British airline Virgin Atlantic flew certainly one of its business airliners from
London to New York on Tuesday utilizing 100% sustainable aviation gasoline, the corporate
mentioned Tuesday.
The airline flew a Boeing 787 Dreamliner powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 1000
engines from Heathrow Airport to John F. Kennedy Worldwide Airport,
in response to a information launch. Virgin mentioned its flight marked the primary time a
business jet had flown throughout the Atlantic Ocean on unblended SAF.
The flight burned a twin SAF mix, 88% of which was made by Air BP utilizing waste
fat. The remaining 12% was made out of plant sugars and was provided by Virent,
a subsidiary of U.S. refiner Marathon Petroleum, in response to Virgin Atlantic.
The kind of SAF produced by Virent is assessed as artificial fragrant
kerosene, which is “wanted in 100% SAF blends to provide the gasoline the required
aromatics for engine perform,” the airline mentioned.
Shai Weiss, chief govt officer of Virgin Atlantic, mentioned the trans-Atlantic
flight proved SAF’s viability as a drop-in alternative for standard
fossil-based jet gasoline.
“[SAF is] the one viable answer for decarbonizing long-haul aviation,” Weiss
mentioned in a information launch. “It’s taken radical collaboration to get right here, and
we’re proud to have reached this vital milestone, however we have to push
additional.”
There’s “merely not sufficient SAF” accessible for finish customers, Weiss mentioned, including
that considerably extra funding and government-backed “regulatory certainty
and worth help mechanisms” are wanted for SAF manufacturing to scale up.
Every week in the past, U.S. enterprise jet producer Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. mentioned it
operated the world’s first trans-Atlantic flight utilizing unblended SAF. The
firm on Nov. 19 flew a smaller airplane — certainly one of its G600 plane — from its
headquarters in Savannah, Georgia, to Farnborough Airport close to London,
in response to a information launch.
Gulfstream mentioned its SAF was made by Boston-based biofuel producer World Power,
which used waste fat as feedstock.
