Virgin Atlantic Flight, partly funded by the UK government, has been hailed by the aviation industry and ministers as a demonstration of the potential to significantly cut net carbon emissions from flying.

Virgin Atlantic said the flight to New York would show that SAF was a safe replacement for normal kerosene jet fuel. The Virgin Atlantic Boeing 787 flight was powered without using fossil fuels, relying on so-called sustainable aviation fuel largely comprised of grease and other waste fats.

Airlines see SAF as a critical route to cutting net emissions because it can be used in existing planes. However, the availability of the fuel now is less than 0.1 percent of the total volume of jet fuel used worldwide.

While this was the first jetliner to make the transatlantic journey using only sustainable fuel, it was not a commercial flight and not the first jet to do so.

Gulfstream Aerospace was the first to make the crossing earlier this month with a business jet powered only by eco-fuel. Air France-KLM flew from Paris to Montreal two years ago using a mix of petroleum-based jet fuel and a synthetic derived from waste cooking oils.

The flight came ahead of the United Nations Cop28 climate negotiations from this week in Dubai, where the future of fossil fuels will be hotly debated.

According to the theguardian, Reuters