Photo: LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP / Getty Images
Last Friday, Airbus made the first flight of its giant of the skies, the A380, powered by 100% with sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), derived mainly from cooking oil and other residual fats, as reported by the company in a statement published on its website.
Airplane A380 test, powered by SAF, and to which gave the name of MSN 1, made a three-hour flight from Blagnac airport, in Toulouse, Airbus headquarters in France, with one of its four Rolls engines -Royce Trent 1200.
On Tuesday 29 A second flight with the same cooking fuel took place in March to test take-off and landing with sustainable fuels.
This has been the third type of Airbus aircraft that has flown with a 100% of SAF in the last year, and it is by far the largest. In March 2021, Airbus flew an Airbus A319 with sustainable fuel, followed by a single aisle aircraft A319neo powered by SAF in October 2021.
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According to the press release, the company TotalEnergies was in charge of providing the 27 tons of unmixed SAF needed for the flight. The SAF, explains Airbus, which was produced in Normandy, near Le Havre (France), was manufactured from Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids (HEFA), without aromatics or sulfur, and composed mainly of used cooking oil, as well as by other residual fats.
The company expects its aircraft to be certified to fly with SAF at the end of the decade. Currently, Airbus aircraft can operate with up to a 50% of SAF, mixed with traditional kerosene.
“Increase the use of SAF remains a key pathway to achieving the industry’s ambition of zero carbon emissions by 2050 ”, Airbus said in a statement.
The return of A380?
Airbus ceased production of its double-decker aircraft A380 more than three years ago, citing low demand and high production costs. The company had announced that the production of A380 would end in 2021.
Many of the aircraft are still in operation, however, and Airbus has also found these behemoths to be an ideal test bed for sustainable technologies, due to their spacious interior.
In February, for example, the aviation giant also announced that it intends to equip the same aircraft used for this month’s SAF test flights to test hydrogen engines at 2050, as reported by Interesting Engineering.
For his part, Steven Le Moing, director of the Airbus SAF program, described the performance of the SAF-powered engine as completely “normal” and it was the same as they had seen in previous tests on other planes.
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