Virgin Atlantic’s Flight100 saved 95 tonnes of CO2 in first SAF flight

Flight100, a Virgin Atlantic Boeing 787 using Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines, flew from London Heathrow to New York JFK on November 28, 2023 and was the world’s first commercial aircraft operating across the Atlantic on 100 per cent SAF.

According to Virgin Atlantic, the flight did not require any engine, airframe or fuel infrastructure changes and operated on safety standards equivalent to every other commercial flight.

The flight followed over a year of collaboration by a Virgin Atlantic led consortium including Boeing, Rolls-Royce, Imperial College London, Sheffield University, ICF and Rocky Mountain Institute. It was part funded by Department for Transport and approved by the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and other regulators including the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA).

The consortium published the results from the flight this week (May 7, 2024), which included a full lifecycle analysis. This revealed that Flight100 saved 95 tonnes of CO2, or 64 per cent of the emissions produced from a standard flight from London Heathrow to New York JFK.