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Truck refuels Flight100 before its flight from London to New YorkPA MediaOn November 28, 2023, a Boeing 787 operated by British airline Virgin Atlantic made the first transcontinental flight powered entirely by sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), from Heathrow airport in London, UK, to John F. Kennedy (JFK) airport in New York, USA. The fuel used to make the 5,570-kilometer trip between the two cities in 7 hours and 16 minutes was a mixture of two compounds: 88% hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids (HEFA), made from oil-producing plants by AirBP, a division of BP; and 12% synthetic aromatic kerosene, made from vegetable sugars by American energy company Virent. The Flight100 project was a collaboration between Imperial College London, UK, the University of Sheffield, UK, Boeing, Rolls-Royce, and BP. A few days earlier, on November 22, Emirates Airlines also made history by completing a demonstration flight in Dubai using an Airbus A380 with one of its four engines powered 100% by SAF. Other companies also intend to increase their use of this type of fuel. In April 2022, Ryanair announced that a third of its flights departing from Amsterdam in the Netherlands would use a 40% SAF mix (AutoEvolution, November 23; Virgin Atlantic and Imperial College, November 28).
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