AIRBUS A380 POWERED BY COOKING OIL
An Airbus A380 has just successfully completed a flight powered on cooking oil. The test flight took place from Toulouse to Nice, a three-hour flight.
On 25 March, the A380 took off from Blagnac Airport in Toulouse where Airbus is headquartered in France where it landed again as well.
CNN reports that it was powered by Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and operating on a single Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine. The SAF is predominantly made of used cooking oil and waste fats.
As if that wasn’t impressive enough, Airbus then decided to follow that up with a second flight and used the same cooking oil fuel. The plane took off from Toulouse again, but this time it flew to Nice on the French Riviera.
The aim of the second flight was to monitor the use of SAF during take-off and landing. The SAF was supplied by TotalEnergies in the Normandy region of France.
This is not the first time that Airbus has been testing SAF. In March 2021 it tested a SAF-powered flight with an A350 and an A319neo in October of that same year.
The company hopes to get its aircraft certified to fly on SAF by the end of the decade. Currently, Airbus aircraft can be powered by up to 50% SAF, blended with traditional kerosene, reports CNN.
“Increasing the use of SAF remains a key pathway to achieving the industry’s ambition of netzero carbon emissions by 2050,” Airbus said in a statement.
Image credit: Airlive