FINAL FRONTIER

Sustainable aviation fuel is the key to cleaning up transport. Has India got it right?

- S DINAKAR

Last month, a Virgin Atlantic flight running solely on sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), a non-polluting variant, completed its journey from London to New York, making it the first transAtlantic flight by a commercial airline to use a 100 per cent blend of jet fuel, although it must be mentioned that the flight had no paying passenger or cargo.

The aircraft was a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, using Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines. It carried around 60 tonnes of SAF and consumed three-fourths of it. Existing standards allow for a 50 per cent SAF blend in commercial jet engines, though this voyage demonstrated that in-production Rolls Royce engines for long-haul aircraft are compatible with 100 per cent.

Closer home, SpiceJet operated India's first domestic biofuel test flight on a 25 per cent blend of SAF in 2018, followed by Indigo last year. In March this year, Vistara operated a wide-body aircraft on a long-haul international route using sustainable aviation fuel. A blend of 30 per cent SAF and 70 per cent conventional jet fuel was used on a ferry flight between Charleston International Airport, South Carolina, to Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi, which resulted in the reduction of approximately 150,000 pounds of carbon-dioxide emission over the fuel's life cycle. Later, Vistara also operated a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, 0 flying from Delhi to Mumbai, on a blend of 17 per cent SAF and 83 per cent conventional jet fuel, resulting in reduction of approximately 10,000 pounds of CO2 emission, says a Vistara spokesperson.