Business magnate Richard Branson unveiled Virgin Atlantic’s new plane late last month, which aims to save on fuel.
At Virgin Group’s Virgin Hotels in New York City, Branson made the announcement that his airline became the first of its kind in the world to complete a transatlantic flight on 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) after Flight100 touched down at John F. Kennedy International Airport hours earlier.
“Today was truly historic,” Branson said to a room full of media and industry leaders. “After today, everybody now knows it can be done.”
Around 11:30 a.m. local time, Flight100, a Boeing 787 powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines, took off from London’s Heathrow airport to demonstrate that SAF fuel is a secure substitute for jet fuel generated from fossil fuels in long-haul flights. It was a major milestone in the industry’s goal to become net-zero by 2050.
No paying passengers were aboard since it was a non-commercial flight, but Branson was accompanied by dozens of other people, including his daughter, Holly, CEO Shai Weiss, members of the media, and government officials.
“We’ve shown that it can be done safely and that’s at 100%,” Weiss told Fox News in an interview, adding that there is still a long road ahead.
SAF is produced using a range of sustainable feedstocks, like cooking oil. It is seen as the only viable solution to decarbonize flying until other technologies, such as new electric and hydrogen-powered options, come into play, but those possibilities are still decades away, according to Virgin.
“So the scale required by 2030, not for Virgin Atlantic, for the world is 100 to 150 times of what we have today,” Weiss said.
The CEO also repeatedly cautioned that industry and policymakers need to do significantly more work, arguing that the issue is much larger than Virgin Atlantic.
“There is simply not enough SAF and it’s clear that in order to reach production at scale, we need to see significantly more investment,” Weiss said in a statement ahead of the flight. “This will only happen when regulatory certainty and price support mechanisms, backed by government, are in place.”
