The Scandinavian airlines SAS and Norwegian Air plan to have their entire passenger fleets using biofuel following the successful flight of two passenger aircraft today.
Both airlines’ aircraft were using a synthetic fuel that aims to reduce the amount of carbon emissions that come from commercial passenger flights.
Both the SAS flight from Trondheim, Norway, and the Norwegian Air flight from Oslo used a fuel known as JET A-1 which, by jet fuel’s standard, is considerably cleaner with a blend of 48pc biofuel, derived from cooking oil, and 52pc traditional jet paraffin.
Both airlines envisage this biofuel to be used in all its aircraft by next year, with the biofuel portion of the fuel deriving from renewable biomass harvested from Norway’s vast forests.
Trondheim lufthavn kl 15.43: historisk tanking til første fly med biodrivstoff i Norge – SK371 http://t.co/3o5VsNf2Sw pic.twitter.com/WsR4rcCXp6
— SAS (@SAS) November 11, 2014
In a statement issued by SAS (in Norwegian), the company said it was only right it committed to a cleaner source of fuel, given the obvious demand for cleaner air travel worldwide.
Speaking after the first successful non-commercial test last Friday, SAS CEO Rickard Gustafson, said, “Even though we in SAS have reduced our total CO2 emissions by a full 13pc since 2005, biofuel will enable us to reduce those harmful emissions a great deal more as we are heading for a more sustainable aviation industry. The next step will be to create the conditions that allow this progress to be realised on a large scale in Scandinavia.”
SAS aircraft image via Shutterstock
