Lots about SAF this week! (Allplane Newsletter #69)
Picture: United Airlines
As you will note, this week’s newsletter is quite heavily weighted towards the sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) scene, because there have been some major news in this space in the last few days!
United Airlines flew a regular commercial flight with a Boeing 737 MAX 8 using 100% SAF in one engine. The other engine was running on conventional jet fuel, thus, remaining within the 50% regulatory limit. The flight, from Chicago O’Hare to Washington National, was, apparently, a history first!
British Airways will source SAF from Phillips 66. The fuel is going to be produced by the American energy company at its Immingham facility, in Humberside, the first facility in the UK to produce SAF at scale. Interesting how BA is diversifying its SAF suppliers.
Austrian Airlines is partnering with local energy major OMV to do the same. The Austrian flag carrier is going to source 1,500 metric tons of SAF in 2022, as the airline puts it the equivalent of “333 Vienna-London flights with a typical short to medium-haul AUA aircraft (Airbus A320)”.
More airlines adding SAF to their fuel mix. Vueling, the LCC of the IAG group, used SAF for the first time on a commercial flight, between Barcelona and Seville. The fuel was supplied by Spanish energy company Repsol.
The OneWorld alliance airlines will place a joint order for 350 million gallons of blended (at 40%) sustainable aviation fuel to be delivered at San Francisco International Airport. The fuel will be produced in California by Aemetis.
If last week we commented on the data recently released by Airbus from their 100% SAF test flights, now is the turn of Embraer and Pratt & Whitney to run their own 100% SAF flight testing programme.
How do battery-electric, hydrogen-powered fuel cells and power to liquids (fuel) compare in terms of efficiency and energy losses. It doesn’t apply only to aviation, but here’s a nice infographic for context
The European Partnership for Clean Aviation, the entity/platform that groups the EU’s programmes in the field of green aviation has become officially a reality on 30th November and has a new website (the cookie warnings constantly popping up every time you land on a new page keep being annoying though!)
ACIA Aero Leasing has placed an order for 10 (plus 20 options) of Universal Hydrogen conversion kits for ATR-72 aircraft. It will be interesting to see this how demand for this type of propulsion evolves as soon as it becomes a reality.
The Renault 4L is a classic of the French automotive industry. It has now being turned into a drone of sorts. Cool, although I doubt will be in serial production any time soon…!
What else in “traditional” aviation?
Russian airline S7 has launched a subscription service, “S7 Boost”, that for 149 Rubles per month (about $2) gives free or discounted access to a range of ancillary services. Similar to the programme that Wizz Air has been successfully operating for quite some time already.
