ASIM, may 15
(Chief Executive Officer at Virgin Atlantic). It’s not often that you witness two sets of competitors sharing the stage, but today was an exception. Attending the Sustainable Skies World Summit in Farnborough, I had the privilege to join British Airways CEO Sean Doyle, along with our OEM partners, Brian Moran from Boeing and Julie Kitcher from Airbus. Together, we acknowledged the necessity for radical collaboration within our industry to achieve Net Zero emissions by 2050, emphasizing the importance of near-term actions such as fleet modernization and widespread adoption of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), alongside long-term technological innovations like Hydrogen and electrification.
Last week, Virgin Atlantic released highly anticipated findings from Flight100, demonstrating SAF as a safe, 100% drop-in replacement for fossil fuels, underscoring the urgency of decarbonization for both the environment and accessibility to air travel. With the government’s endorsement of an ambitious SAF mandate, the focus now shifts to scaling up production and ensuring affordability, with proposals for revenue certainty mechanisms and legislative support to expedite this transition. At Virgin Atlantic, we remain committed to realizing a sustainable future, where ample SAF availability will lead us to fly greener skies.
