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What did we learn from Virgin Atlantic’s 100% sustainable aviation fuel ‘Flight100’ experiment?

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On Wednesday, Virgin Atlantic published the scientific findings from the innovative ‘Flight100’ SAF test flight it operated in November last year.

You may recall that I was one of just over 100 ‘industry observers’ to join the flight, which became the first transatlantic flight on a commercial aircraft to operate with 100% sustainable aviation fuels.

It marked an important end to testing by Virgin Atlantic and its partners, including Boeing and Rolls-Royce, which subjected the aircraft’s engines to many hours of testing before Virgin’s Flight100 ever took off.

Virgin Atlantic's 100% sustainable aviation fuel 'Flight100'

The challenge was partly funded by the Department of Transport which put up £1 million, matched by Virgin Atlantic. The goal was to validate assumptions and predictions with an end-to-end flight test.

The results are in

Over the past six months, Virgin Atlantic has been working together with it’s consortium partners, including the University of Sheffield and Imperial College, to process the data collected.

On Tuesday night I was invited to an event hosted by Sir Lindsay Hoyle at Speaker’s House in Parliament to find out more.

Here are the headline results:

  • Overall, the flight saved 95 tonnes of CO2, a 64% reduction in emissions across the entire flight
  • The sustainable aviation fuel used by the flight had a 1% improvement in energy density over regular jet fuel, reducing overall fuel burn by 350kg
  • There was a 40% reduction in particulate emissions such as sulphur and nitrogen oxides, as well as reduced contrail formation
Virgin Atlantic's 100% sustainable aviation fuel 'Flight100'

What this means for the future

One key feature of Flight100 is that it required no modifications to the aircraft, engines or any other aspect of flight. It was treated as a normal, commercial operation and held to all the same safety standards. The only difference was that the fuel used came from waste sources rather than virgin fossil fuels.

The results above prove that sustainable aviation fuel is at least equivelant to fossil-derived jet fuels. In many cases it is superior, offering a cleaner burn and the associated efficiencies.

For now the maximum volume of SAF that can be used on commercial flights remains at 50%, but Flight100 proves this is just a regulatory limit. There are no reasons why this cannot be increased in the future.

Of course the biggest obstacle to widespread SAF adoption remains production: total global volumes are around 1%, falling short of the 10% the UK Government is likely to mandate by 2030. UK production will need to scale up c.100 times from where it is now to meet that target.

Virgin Atlantic used the event to double down on calls for further support for SAF production, saying “We must now see urgent action from Government, oil majors and private capital to invest in the production capacity needed to deliver a thriving UK SAF industry.”

You can read the full report online here.

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Comments (37)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Sign of the times says:
    13 May13 May 05:25

    So the bottom line is eat more poppadoms before your curry or do McDonalds stuff; neither of which stack up with our declining Western health from overeating this.
    Reminds me of “All my life’s a circle” by the New Seekers – when Eurovision was about songs and life was “normal”!

  • Alex says:
    13 May13 May 06:44

    This is great to hear, but the fuels must surely come from synthetic feedstocks rather than biofuels to be feasibe?

    Most analyses of bio-fuel-powered aviation show that it requires impossibly large areas of land to be turned over to fuel crops.

    Better to use abundant renewable energy to create fuels at lattitudes that can leverage evermore efficient solar energy; better yet, capturing atmospheric CO2 for it.

    • TooPoorToBeHere says:
      13 May13 May 07:47

      Some portion of the fuel used is derived from cellulose feedstocks rather than oils, which is considerably more promising in terms of availability. Using cellulose rather than sugar to produce ethanol could produce an enormous increase in output from a given land area.

      I wish them well and hope they succeed because I like flying and sooner or later on current trends the green lobby is going to make it impossible for ordinary people. However…

      Fundamentally this is a religious matter rather than a scientific one. Even if they built a big plant in the desert which took in nothing but solar power, seawater, and atmospheric CO2 to produce burnable hydrocarbons, it’s still doomed. The green lobby will “discover” some new “problem” which means flying must be banned.

      We can see this with the “discovery” by same lobby of tyre particulates and that producing EVs consumes minerals which come from mines.

      • KrautNZ says:
        13 May13 May 08:50

        Is the “Green Lobby” here in the room with us now?

        • Alex Sm says:
          19 May19 May 16:48

          In the same quantities as the “anti-green” lobby, so it seems! 💚

    • memesweeper says:
      13 May13 May 08:15

      The US uses a significant fraction of biofuels as a component of their gasoline for cars. If they all go electric (big if) then thats a vast amount of material for SAF.

    • Rhys says:
      13 May13 May 08:50

      Yes. On this particular flight, none of the fuel was biofuel, it was all waste product.

  • TimM says:
    13 May13 May 06:47

    The photo of Speaker’s House has given me ideas for decorating my new flat.

    One crucial figure not mentioned in the article is fuel cost – one of the bottom lines for airlines. There is a limited supply of old chip pan fat.

  • Paul says:
    13 May13 May 07:09

    …….. , as well as reduced contrail formation

    How on earth did they measure that? Cameras or were they followed! Sounds completely spurious.

    • Andy says:
      13 May13 May 08:45

      See page 15 of the report.

      • Rich says:
        13 May13 May 13:12

        Have read the Report – mostly valid claims / good news but reduced contrails were due to higher cruising altitude due to lighter all up weight. So nothing to do with SAF and not repeatable in commercial service. Seems a strange thing to emphasise then (perhaps they could also claim less wear on the tyres if that approach is being followed).

        • Rhys says:
          13 May13 May 13:24

          Lower particulates emissions is also thought to reduce the formation of contrails. Mentioned elsewhere in the report.

  • Erico1875 says:
    13 May13 May 08:08

    The end product on the day, may well produce these % savings. However taking production,transportation etc in to consideration, I wonder how the figures stack.
    A recent report shows a wood burner using locally sourced logs has half the environmental impact of an air source heat pump, yet the Scottish government wants to ban them

    • Colin MacKinnon says:
      13 May13 May 08:19

      @Erico1875 The Scottish government has banned them in new builds with building warrants issued after May 1st this year – along with anything else that burns stuff (such as our wood pellet boiler)

      Even crazier is that all this was advertised as eco-friendly by govt agencies until a few weeks ago!

      Wood stoves “for emergency backup” will still be allowed, but there is no case for emergency backup in most places, definitely not in towns and cities.

    • Ken says:
      13 May13 May 08:46

      The problem with wood burning stores, even the best designed with quality wood, is that they spew out particles that are just the right size to fill your lungs and pass through them into the body.

      The report you cite was from the Scottish Forestry commission and was at best applicable to at most 50,000 rural homes.

    • Rhys says:
      13 May13 May 08:51

      There are air quality issues to consider too.

    • Andrew. says:
      13 May13 May 09:10

      This winter, my neighbour here in Oxford, heated his house exclusively using an ASHP powered by solar panels and battery storage on all but 7 days. He has a hybrid system and still uses his combi gas boiler for hot water.

      My cousin, who lives just outside Crieff, is in a similar position albeit with a GSHP and no gas supply. She topped up her batteries using off-peak electricity during the darkest days of winter. At those times, Scotland’s wind and hydro were providing the core generation capacity.

      There’s no need to burn coal, logs, or peat sending dirty particulates into the air when there are clean and efficient alternatives.

    • buchanan101 says:
      13 May13 May 17:07

      Half the environmental impact with wood burners maybe, but that’s not the issue with them – it’s particulates and therefore human impact

  • L Allen says:
    13 May13 May 08:15

    Are the longer term effects of SAF on maintenance of things like fuel lines etc known? Is it more/less corrosive or much the same, for example?

    • Andy says:
      13 May13 May 08:53

      Long-term effects are unknown for obvious reasons. However, related to your question, in the short term – the APU was examined after ground testing :

      “Following the SAF test, the APU was visually inspected using a borescope, a specialised camera tool that can be inserted into internal sections of the APU to look for any signs of damage or leaks. The results of these tests confirmed that there were no identifiable adverse effects of using the Flight100 SAF blend within the APU.”

      see page 11 of report.

  • Rui N. says:
    13 May13 May 08:25

    “the 10% the UK Government is likely to mandate by 2030”
    This was alaready approved a couple of weeks ago. It is indeed 10% by 2030 – starts next year at 1 or 2%.

  • Greenpen says:
    13 May13 May 08:42

    There must be the science somewhere but the comments as to the fuel are really just good statements as made by all companies as part of their green credentials image!

    • Andy says:
      13 May13 May 08:55

      Lots of science in the report. The link is in the article, if you’re really interested.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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