A Virgin Atlantic flight using 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) has taken off from London's Heathrow Airport bound for New York.
The flight is the first of its kind across the Atlantic and the airline's founder Sir Richard Branson has hailed it as "historic". The aviation industry and the government say the experiment is a step towards net zero air travel.
But SAF currently costs three to five times as much as regular kerosene jet fuel and environmental campaigners say the transatlantic flight is just a "gimmick". Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
The flight is the first of its kind across the Atlantic and the airline's founder Sir Richard Branson has hailed it as "historic". The aviation industry and the government say the experiment is a step towards net zero air travel.
But SAF currently costs three to five times as much as regular kerosene jet fuel and environmental campaigners say the transatlantic flight is just a "gimmick". Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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NewsTranscript
00:00 This may look like an ordinary Virgin Atlantic flight from Heathrow to New York,
00:05 but it's carrying no fair-paying passengers, mostly a bunch of scientists,
00:10 and it's largely being powered by cooking oil.
00:13 This pioneering flight is the first transatlantic trip to use 100% sustainable aviation fuel.
00:21 The UK's regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority, approved the flight earlier this month.
00:27 The aviation industry, the government and Virgin Atlantic's founder, Richard Branson,
00:32 have all hailed the flight as a big step towards environmentally friendly and cost-effective air travel.
00:38 It's a historic day.
00:41 People have always said it would be impossible to fly a jet right across the Atlantic on sustainable aviation fuel,
00:51 and we hope that this will be the very beginning of a new revolution in fuel in the years to come.
01:01 Cooking oils make up 80% of the flight's fuel blend.
01:05 The rest is mostly from plant-based products.
01:08 There have already been a number of test flights using the sustainable fuel,
01:12 including this one just a few days ago in Dubai with an Emirates A380,
01:16 but it's important to know that SAF is not net zero.
01:19 Instead, it's thought to reduce carbon emissions by up to 70% compared with traditional fossil fuels,
01:25 so environmental campaigners have been airing their grievances.
01:29 I'd say the use of this fuel is more a gimmick than a real solution to the climate problem that aviation poses,
01:37 because there's no way that these kind of fuels can be produced on a scale that is anything close
01:42 to what the aviation industry needs to be genuinely sustainable.
01:46 In the short term, the only thing we can do is look at using the tax system
01:51 to constrain demand on the small number of people who fly a great deal.
01:56 SAF is already being used in small amounts for commercial flying,
02:00 but it accounts for less than 0.1% of the aviation fuel consumed globally,
02:05 and SAF currently costs three to five times as much as regular kerosene jet fuel,
02:11 with it only being produced in small volumes.
02:14 Frequent use of SAF would thrust ticket prices to much higher levels,
02:18 unless cheaper ways of producing the fuel can be found.
02:21 What you have to do is scale up production.
02:23 That's why we're putting the investment with our advanced fuels fund
02:26 into scaling up those commercial plants in the UK.
02:29 Just last week I announced £53 million of that to go to those successful companies.
02:35 That work is underway.
02:36 The experiment is being funded by £1 million of taxpayers' money,
02:41 so many will be hoping the flight is a step towards net zero air travel,
02:46 rather than a load of hot air.
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