One in five customers booking private charger flights through Victor is voluntarily paying to reduce the carbon footprint of their trips through optional purchases of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), the company says. Under the booking platform’s "Pay Here, Use There" book-and-claim offering that launched a year ago with energy group Neste, jet passengers are now buying an average of £965 ($1,225) worth of SAF for each booking, equating to a carbon cut of 1.5 tonnes per flight.
The average percentage of fossil fuel voluntarily replaced by SAF for each Victor booking is 30 percent, and during the first 12 months of the program, a total of 269 bookings were made, representing total purchases of 132,400 kilograms (36,487 gallons) of SAF. Neste and Victor have called on airlines to adopt their approach, which they say provides travelers with a transparent way to voluntarily take responsibility for their own carbon emissions.
Since SAF is not yet widely available at all airports, "Pay Here, Use There" customers pay a premium for SAF to be uploaded into an aircraft elsewhere in the Neste My SAF network. Members of Victor’s booking platform can choose how much fossil fuel for their own flight to “replace” with SAF, ranging from 5 to 100 percent of the total. The receipt for each flight clearly breaks out how much SAF they purchased.
Victor and Neste recognized the potential impact of government mandates for the use of SAF through the EU ReFuelEU requirements starting at 2 percent in 2025 and rising to 10 percent by 2030 under a UK-initiated scheme, but argued that the air transport industry must encourage additional voluntary contributions. They also pointed to the need for oil companies to make higher levels of capital investment in SAF production, such as the €1.9 billion Finland-based Neste is spending to expand its refinery in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
The proportional increase in the cost of a flight for which customers have purchased SAF on a book-and-claim basis varies significantly depending on the percentage of SAF involved and the actual fuel burn for the particular flight taken. Victor told AIN that if a 30 percent SAF blend is selected, then the percentage increase in the cost of the flight booking will be around 4.45 percent, rising to an average of 14.4 percent for a 100 percent mix. This data is based on averages recorded for SAF purchases made during the first 12 months of the "Pay Here, Use There" offering.
“Why not adopt our ‘Pay Here, Use There’ blueprint across the commercial airline sector?” said Victor co-CEO Toby Edwards. “Flyers want a solution they can trust and which allows a credible reduction in their greenhouse gas emissions.”
Fractional provider Flexjet already includes carbon emission offset in the cost of all of its flights for customers in the U.S. and Europe. The operator has partnered with 4Air to ensure that a consistent and transparent approach is taken, with all Flexjet flights including offsets at 300 percent of the carbon emissions to cover both carbon dioxide and other pollutants.