A Virgin Atlantic passenger plane powered only by alternative fuel sources has landed at JFK airport in New York after departing from London’s Heathrow airport.
According to the BBC, the flight was not carrying any airfare-paying passengers. The Conservative Party’s Henry Smith was on board the flight and called it a “significant U.K. aviation achievement.”
The Boeing 787 was filled with 50 tons of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), which can be made from various sources including crops, cooking oils and even household waste. Of the two types of SAFs used for the flight, 88% of them were derived from waste fats while the remaining 12% came from U.S.-based corn production waste.
Though planes still create carbon when using SAFs, aviation industry experts said that the lifecycle emissions of these fuels can be 70% lower than the outputs created when using traditional jet fuel.
Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin, is hopeful of the mass adoption of SAFs in the aviation industry even if the process is “going to take a while.”
“But you have to start somewhere,” Branson said in an interview. “And if we didn’t prove it can be done, you would never, ever get sustainable aviation fuel.”
Though there are no dedicated commercial SAF production plants in the U.K., the government said it is hoping to have five of these plants under construction in the country by 2025, with the support of grant funding.
