Virgin Atlantic Lands First Flight Powered By Biofuels. Who’s Next?

30.11.2023 - 00:03 / forbes.com

Virgin Atlantic flew from London Heathrow to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport on Tuesday using only sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), marking a world’s first in commercial transatlantic travel.

For the first time ever, a commercial plane flew across the Atlantic Ocean from London to New York without using fossil fuels.

Two Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines on a Boeing 787 operated by Virgin Atlantic were instead powered by 70 tons of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), a broad category of biofuel made primarily from waste oils and animal fat that emits 70% less carbon than traditional jet fuel, according to a press release. “Flight100” officially landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Tuesday afternoon.

Though critics are calling the flight a stunt, its intended objective per the UK government, which launched a competition for the project over a year ago and spent £1 million pounds to sponsor it, was a proof of concept. Britain's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) granted Virgin Atlantic a permit “to showcase how the fuel can be used to decarbonize flying.”

“This is a global ambition,” said Anthony Browne MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State a day before takeoff. “When you have technology transitions, it’s the very first steps that are by far the most important. You get the regulatory frameworks in place; you show the technology works. You can fly across the Atlantic in a commercial airline with 100% SAF. Then, you get production going, not just in the UK but in countries around the world. One of the key themes of the United Nations climate summit [in Dubai] last week is that every country is interested. It’s a new industry being created. If you can produce SAF, it’s an opportunity.”

Browne’s comments preceded a post on X, formerly Twitter, from British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak yesterday, celebrating the occasion and framing the UK as a first-mover in the aviation industry’s widely-hyped pledge to “fly net zero by 2050.” (Virgin Atlantic does not claim that Tuesday’s flight was 'net-zero'.)

For the past year, Virgin has been working with Boeing, Rolls-Royce, the Imperial College London, the University of Sheffield, ICF and Rocky Mountain Institute, in partnership with the UK Department for Transport to pull off this one-time event, which also required approval from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.

In previous test flights, SAF’s viability was proven to be a safe replacement for fossil-derived jet fuel in military aircraft by US and UK air forces in 2022. More recently, Emirates powered one of four engines with SAF on a A380 demonstration flight. But Tuesday’s Virgin flight was fully powered by SAF, offering the