Tata's AirAsia India successfully operates country’s first commercial flight on India-made sustainable fuel

Air India’s low-cost subsidiary AirAsia India, successfully operated the country’s first commercial flight on the Pune-Mumbai sectors using an indigenously produced sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) blend early Friday morning.

Flight I5767 flew from Pune to Delhi powered by SAF blended aviation turbine fuel (ATF) supplied by Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL) in partnership with Praj Industries, which provided the technology for the blend.

Receiving the flight at Delhi’s Indira Gandi International Airport the minister for petroleum and natural gas, Hardeep Singh Puri said, “This would be the first domestic commercial passenger flight with SAF blending of up to 1 per cent in demonstration mode. By 2025, if we target to blend 1 per cent SAF blending in jet fuel, India would require around 14 crore litres of SAF per annum. More ambitiously, if we target for 5 per cent SAF blend, India required around 70 crore litres of SAF per annum.”

Informing the country could become a surplus SAF producer, Puri observed, “India has feedstock for potential production of 19 to 24 million tons of SAF per year, whereas the estimated maximum requirement of SAF in India, considering 50 per cent blend, is around 8 to 10 million tonnes per year by 2030.”

Commending AirAsia India, IOCL and Praj Industries on the achievement, the minister observed that the development of indigenous solutions would not only go a long way in mitigating the environmental impact of aviation and but also pave the way for the widespread adoption of SAF in the country. Sharing pre-Covid-19 data, he said the Indian aviation sector consumed around 8 million tons of ATF and emitted around 20 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2019.

Towards a sustainable aviation industry

Also speaking on the occasion, managing director AirAsia India and Air India Express, Aloke Singh said, “As part of the Tata group and a subsidiary of Air India, we are committed to innovation and collaboration in order to mitigate environmental impact towards a more sustainable future for Indian aviation.”

Chairman IOCL, Shrikant Madhav Vaidya stated, “Under the aegis of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, we have begun this journey, and I am confident that SAF will soon become the norm rather than an exception in the aviation industry.

Founder chairman of Praj Industries, Dr. Pramod Chaudhari averred, “This is another demonstration of the important role of the farming community, by way of annadata (food producer) to urjadata (energy producer), in India’s journey towards energy independence and green growth.”

Praj Industries has developed the fuel in partnership with the US-based biofuels company Gevo Inc., which has developed a breakthrough alcohol-to-jet (ATJ) technology for the production of SAF using sugarcane molasses as feedstock. The SAF samples produced at Praj Industries’ research & development facility underwent detailed testing at IOCL laboratories before being cleared for the special flight.

Quoting the civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, Business Today had earlier reported that ministries of civil aviation and petroleum and natural gas are currently working together on guidelines for promoting the use of SAF by getting Indian carriers to blend it with regular ATF.

The proposed rollout would be similar to what India is doing through its ongoing Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) programme to achieve a 20 per cent mix of ethanol in petroleum for the road transport sector by 2030.

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