Africa’s first sustainable biofuel commercial flight took place this month and involved a B737 that flew from Johannesburg to Cape Town.
Unusually, the aircraft made use of a jet fuel produced from nicotine-free tobacco plants grown in the Limpopo region of South Africa under the Solaris project. The initiative is a collaboration involving SAA, Boeing, SkyNRG, Sunchem and WWF-SA. Cultivated by smallholder and commercial farmers, the Solaris crop is expected to provide an opportunity to grow sustainable bioenergy resources, while stimulating socio-economic development in the region. The fuel for this flight was refined by AltAir, which is currently undergoing RSB certification.
