Yesterday the news about the first transatlantic flight by Virgin Atlantic from London to New York fuelled entirely by sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) “flew around” the world. There is hope of considerably reducing carbon emissions from air travel that is responsible for at least 3% of all human sources (this might be underestimated due to exclusion of contrails – white fluffy streaks in the sky that trap heat and contribute significantly to greenhouse effect in the atmosphere).
Flight100 “experiment” gathered “on-board flight data, weather data and satellite imagery” that will be used by research teams from the Imperial College London and the University of Sheffield to assess its potential in “decarbonization”.
This step on the route to Jet-Zero is treated as a temporary solution before other technologies like hydrogen fuel or e-engines can be developed and implemented. If SAF is adopted then we could reduce our impact by up to 45%, which means that an average carbon footprint of each passenger on a 4-hour flight would go down from 1t to 650kg CO2 emissions. Flying on SAF is not completely carbon free, due to its production processes (agricultural sources), the aircraft production processes and transport. But it is a positive step in the right direction.
More details about Flight100
